Despite Frank McCourt's horrific poverty, tedious hunger, and devastating losses, Angela's Ashes is not a tragic memoir. Indeed it is uplifting, entertaining and sometimes triumphant. How does Frank McCourt as a writer achieve this? "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: happy childhood is hardly worth it. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse still it is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood,” writes Frank McCourt of his early life. Although Frank McCourt's autobiography, Angela's Ashes, paints a picture of both terrible poverty and struggle, this text is appealing and uplifting because it focuses on both humor and hope. McCourt's lyrics show the determination that people living in terrible conditions must have to overcome their situation and create a better life for themselves and their families. The effect of the story, while often distressing and sad, is not depressing. Frank as the young narrator describes the events of his life without bitterness, anger or guilt. Poverty and hardship are treated simply as if they were a fact of life, and despite the difficult circumstances, many episodes in the novel are hilarious. Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930, just after the start of the Great Depression. During this time, millions of people around the world were unemployed and struggling to survive. Frank's father, Malachy McCourt, struggled to find work and easily lost it due to his alcoholism. His mother, Angela McCourt, being a good Catholic wife, produced five children in four years, making her unable to provide the most basic care to her children. When the little girl, Margaret, died due to shocking living conditions in Brooklyn, Angela fell into clinical depression, which went untreated. Other women in the building where the McCourts lived cared for the children until Angela's cousins ​​arranged for the family to return to Ireland. The image of Brooklyn presented by McCourt is almost cruelly unhappy. In the first chapters of the text there are moments of gentle humor and irony. For example, Frank's baptism by total immersion, when his mother dropped him into the baptismal font, appeared to be a Protestant symbol for the family. McCourt's humor has two main sources: childhood innocence, including kid humor, and the funny situations to which poverty can reduce people..