Movie: Angela’s Ashes

 

Angela’s Ashes is a 1999 movie based on the memoir of the same name by Frank McCourt.

It focuses on the poverty of the McCourt family in Limerick, Republic of Ireland. After a series of misfortunes the family who had emigrated to America are forced to return to Ireland. At school children encounter masters who are too happy to inflict corporal punishment.

The film clip shows boys punished for fighting and the master’s anti-American sentiments.

Below is how part of the scene reads in the original book.

 

There are seven masters in Leamy’s  National School and they all have leather straps, canes, blackthorn sticks. They hit you with the sticks on the shoulder, the back, the legs, and, especially the hands. If they hit you on the hands it’s called a slap. They hit you if you’re late, if you have a leaky nib on your pen, if you laugh, if you talk, and if you don’t know things.

They hit you if you don’t know why God made the world, if you don’t know the patron saint of Limerick, if you can’t recite the Apostle’s Creed, if you can’t add nineteen to forty-seven, if you can’t subtract nineteen from forty-seven, if you don’t know the chief towns and products of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, if you can’t find Bulgaria on the wall map that’s blotted with spit, snot, and blobs of ink thrown by angry pupils expelled forever.

They hit you if you can’t say your name in Irish, if you can’t say the Hail Mary in Irish, if you can’t ask for a lavatory pass in Irish.

It helps to listen to the big boys ahead of you. They can tell you about the master you have now, what he likes and what he hates.

One master will hit you if you don’t know that Eamon de Valera is the greatest man that ever lived. Another master will hit you if you don’t know that Michael Collins was the greatest man that ever lived.

Mr. Benson hates America and you have to remember to hate America or he’ll hit you.

Mr. O’Dea hates England and you have top remember to hate England or he’ll hit you.

If you ever say anything good about Oliver Cromwell they’ll all hit you.

Even if they slap you six times on each hand with the ash plant or the blackthorn with the knobs you must not cry. You’ll be a sissy. There are boys who might jeer at you and mock you in the street but even they have to be careful because the day will come when the master hits and slaps them and they have to keep the tears behind their eyes or be disgraced forever. Some boys say it is better to cry because that pleases the masters. If you don’t cry the masters hate you because you’ve made them look weak before the class and they promise themselves the next time they have you up they’ll draw tears or blood or both.

Extracted from Angela’s Ashes, By Frank McCourt, published by Flamingo, 1997.

 

Video and picture credit: Paramount Pictures

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