for Ireland or the Faith”(138). Reader interpretation decreases as Frank grows up. On page 156, Frank describes a funny scene in a confessional booth with a priest: “There is heavy breathing. The priest has his hand over his mouth and he’s making choking sounds and talking to himself, mother o’ God.” The reader clearly sees the priest is laughing and that Frank does not know this.Finally arriving at the age of fourteen the written text, thoughts and the relationship with the reader reach a point where all merge to present a mature, complex and an evolved Frank McCourt. In the last part of this book, the writing has changed noticeably compared to the beginning and the middle sections. In contrast from the age of four and eleven years old, the following exert on page 411 is a good example to support the complexity of Frank at the age of fourteen. “Frost is already whitening the fresh earth on the grave and I think of Theresa cold in the coffin, the red hair, the green eyes. I can’t understand the feelings going through me but I know that with all the people who died in the lanes around me and all the people who left I never had a pain like this in my heart and I hope I never will again. It’s getting dark. I walk my bicycle out of the graveyard. I have telegrams to deliver.”The text is very descriptive and has an involved sentence structure characteristic of a mature writer. His thoughts and his feelings are deeply profound. The relationship with the reader has changed extremely and is quite noticeable. In the beginning and parts of the middle of this book, the reader is ‘shown’, not described, a scenario where the result is often left to be interpreted. This is not so at the end of his memoir. Frank McCourt, instead of using a ‘show and tell’ narrative method, which applies in the beginning, is in a didactic mode where he explains everything in detail and there...
