Migrating Towards Success

By: Katelyn Wood

The book “Angela’s Ashes” is the story of the author’s, Frank McCourt’s, childhood and all of the struggles that his family went through financially and emotionally. McCourt tells the reader about his parents’ struggles with jobs, and even his own personal struggles with finances. He talks about how his family moved from America to Ireland, and then back to America many years later. This relates greatly to society these days because of the number of people that are jobless. Because the economy is rapidly in decline, full-time and even a lot of part-time jobs are becoming very hard to find. Families are being forced to move out of their hometowns in order to find jobs that allow them to support their households, which is almost identical to what the McCourt family did.

Many people know about the history of families migrating to new countries to find better ways of life. They know that families often tried to move from very poor communities to very industrialized communities, because they were desperate to find jobs. However, many don’t realize that people these days are experiencing the same exact problems. The late 1920’s is when the stock market first crashed. This caused many economic problems globally. McCourt and his family began dealing with the financial and emotional problems that were mentioned in “Angela’s Ashes” in the early 1930’s. This means that the reason for the family’s difficulties was the Great Depression and the crash in the stock markets. McCourt and his family were forced to move around the different towns in Ireland because the Great Depression was causing people to lose jobs and wasn’t allowing them to get new ones. McCourt’s parents didn’t make enough money to feed everyone in the household a full meal every day, let alone three meals plus snacks. This relates greatly to now-a-days because our stock market is crashing; people are becoming frantic, losing jobs, and becoming emotional wrecks. There aren’t enough jobs for everyone; companies just don’t have enough money to hire people for these positions. This means that households aren’t getting a steady income (if they’re getting an income at all); which leads to many families today being unable to provide hearty meals for everyone. 15% of the United State of America’s population (about 46 million people) currently uses food stamps.

Short URL: http://redhawkreport.com/?p=1747

Posted by Katelynnnanne on Nov 21 2011. Filed under FEATUREmE, Life and Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.