Digital Commons Network^™

"'Tis Hard To Dance With One Shoe": The Failure Of The Fathers In Walker's The Color Purple And Mccourt's Angela's Ashes., Gwendolyn Nicole Hale

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In his story, “The Commitments,” Roddy Doyle identifies the Irish as "the blacks of Europe" (148). This sentiment typifies the oppression of the two cultures. The overwhelmingly oppressive society of the two aforementioned groups creates an atmosphere of failure, particularly for the fathers, who, for the most part, are supposed to be the heads of their families. Through Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, the reader discovers the effects of these failures of the fathers due to tyrannical societies that impose dominance over such groups as the African-Americans and the Irish. The main characters, Celie and …