Behavior, Belief, and Experience
(September 2nd, 2014)
As I thought over prompts three and four, I couldn’t help feeling drawn to both. After all, I am strongly convinced the two are closely related. Don’t things you experience throughout your life affect what you believe? And from what you believe stems your behavior. Frank McCourt and I live drastically different lives, but some of the lasting effects of our distinctive upbringings are the same.
From infancy, Frank was confronted with a multitude of misfortunes. One of his most evident and recurring burdens was his father’s irresponsibility to care for the family. Although Frank loved his father and admired his storytelling skill and boisterous spirit, Malachy prioritized ale over his wife and numerous children. My father never had a drinking problem, but when I was young he worked a lot. A lot, a lot. He was mentally at the office even when he wasn’t at the office. The older I got the more obvious it was to me when he was in “work mode”, but like Frank, I had to learn from a young age to be self-amused. There can be positive effects to hands-off parenting, and it is clear in the novel how Frank entertains himself by adventuring or stirring up trouble with friends.
Throughout Frank’s childhood, poverty followed his family like a dutiful shadow. When they would move from house to house, they never found a steady food supply or consistent employment. My family has always been financially stable and we’ve always had a little extra cushion, but I have had a job and I know what it’s like to have an empty bank account. Phone bills and even unexpected expenses have left me with a balance of zero more than once and I’ve been brought to asking my boss for extra hours a few times. It’s tough to put down the pride of self-sufficiency. However, learning the appropriate times to humble yourself is an invaluable skill that some people never learn.
Frank’s Catholic faith is a consistent theme and is tied to many decisions he made throughout the novel. His mother raised him Catholic so he naturally carried on with the Catholic doctrine, among which are the sacraments of communion and confession. My parents also raised me Catholic, but I began reading the bible on my own and I found God apart from religion. As I read this novel, I worried for Frank and how he so blindly followed what others told him. Guilt plagued him whenever he would make a mistake and it would consume him until he confessed his sin and penance covered whatever he had done. Frank allowed fear and guilt to guide him and it led him in circles, seeking a freedom he could never find. He and I are different in this way. I stopped chasing what I couldn’t catch. I stopped fighting the effects and went straight to the source, where I found peace and security unlike anything I’ve ever heard about or seen. I found a sense of wholeness where other things had left me broken. Frank continued attempting to satisfy his immediate wants and pleasures and he was always left empty handed and looking for more.
Experiences play a huge part in what we believe, and what we believe is the motivation behind how we behave. I felt the connection between these three entities was significant and not to be overlooked in an analysis of this novel. Since he was born, Frank was taught the rituals of the Catholic Church and was often mentally enslaved by them. He was blanketed with poverty and grew accustomed to his father’s absence, but he developed many great qualities through hardships and his resilient character and unfading curiosity weren’t squelched by dire circumstances. A person’s experiences, beliefs, and behaviors say a lot about them and, despite each other or in light of each other, each one highlights the next.