Giselle’s Reviews > Angela’s Ashes > Status Update

"She wraps the towel around her finger in to my ear...and claims there's enough wax there to grow potatoes". She compares this immediately to food. Why not something else? I think it just comes to show how she always has food in her mind, considering she always gives away the little food she can acquire to her starving children. Also, it just adds a hint of humor to the overall somber story.

"Paddy Clohessy has no shoe, his mother shaves his head to keep the lice away,his nose always snotty. The sores on his kneecaps never heal because he picks at the scabs and puts them in his mouth". The author just keeps on listing everything Paddy doesn't and does have. Paddy has scabs that he eats. That alone says a lot about Paddy. He is too frustrated to care about shame/others looking, when driven by hunger.

"Mom sobs, 'Oh Jesus, oh, Jesus, will it ever stop? Will I be left with one child?". This quote further builds the mom's desperate condition. It seems that one by one, her children are being ripped away from her. The fact that she is questioning how many children she will be left with, shows how devastated and exasperated she is.