Tis is more about the emotional side of poverty Frank is still poor — he describes cheese sandwiches as a delicacy — but he is no longer at risk of dying from starvation. He generally finds places to sleep and food to eat
He wants the comfort and worry-free lives of the comfortable Americans around him. He wants a girl with whom to share the "excitement." He wants to have healthy eyes and good teeth.
However, in the middle of the privileges surrounding him, on thing Frank wants the most: not luxury but an education. He gazes longingly at the textbooks students carry on the subway, wanting the pride it would give him to hold such a book. Frank in many ways is comfortable in the typical working-class job of his countrymen: the docks where he works unloading trucks, the pubs where his addiction to drinking become dangerously close to the habits of his own father (whose drunkenness nearly destroyed the McCourts in the earlier book). Nevertheless, his craving for an education never leaves him, and he manages to get himself accepted to NYU on the GI Bill.
He is amazed by the comfort of his fellow students, who sit in the cafeteria and idle away hours arguing their fierce convictions:
“Going to college seems to be a great game with them. When they're not talking about their averages the students argue about the meaning of everything, life, the existence of God, the terrible state of the world, and you never know when someone is going to drop in the one word that gives everyone the deep serious look, existentialism.”
Such talk over mindless issues is non-sense to Frank, who has to survive by working at the docks and studying, feeling isolated in both places. At work, his coworkers mock his studies; at school, he feels ashamed of his past and is not prepared to be a college student. The role of the outsider settles firmly upon him. He wonders why he does not get an easy factory job and be done with the struggle.
However, through school, and later as a high school teacher, he slowly discovers the legacy his past has given him: a rich bank of tales that are his and his alone. The role of outsider is in many ways McCourt's greatest gift. He is an acute observer, and his sometimes suspicious distance allows him the eye for the striking description, the ear for accents and melodic phrases.
In one of his earliest NYU classes, the students are asked to select an author they would like to meet. Frank selects Jonathan Swift:
"I'd like to meet him because of Gulliver's Travels. A man with an imagination like that would be a great one to have a cup of tea or a pint with."
Frank McCourt does not need imagination to invent his tales: he has lived them. Nevertheless, McCourt's appreciation for the beauty of language is breath taking. He has a thousand stories that light his lifetime. I would have a cup of tea with him any day.
