McCourt family returns home

The McCourt family’s return from New York to Ireland is a migration shaped by bereavement and financial desperation, not a secure homecoming. After Margaret’s death, relatives arrange and pay for the family’s passage; later, Malachy McCourt’s departure for work in Coventry and the brief hope raised by his remittance expose how the family remains caught between Ireland, England, and the America it still imagines as a future refuge.

Causes and Arrangements

In New York, Delia Fortune argues that something must be done for Angela McCourt and the children, describing them as a disgrace to their relatives. The women make a letter to Angela’s mother, Grandma Sheehan, reporting that baby Margaret has died and that Angela, still grieving in bed, appears to be expecting again. The letter also accuses Malachy McCourt of spending his earnings on drink and presents Ireland as the family’s better destination, while admitting that the women cannot pay the fare themselves. Grandma Sheehan sends money to Philomena Flynn and Delia. They buy tickets, find a steamer trunk through the St. Vincent de Paul Society, hire a van to take the family to the Manhattan pier, and put them aboard the ship. Their brisk farewell—followed by their departure—makes the journey an act of rescue mixed with rejection: the family is sent away because its circumstances have become intolerable to the relatives around it.

The Atlantic Crossing and Arrival

As the ship leaves the dock, Angela points out the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, landmarks associated with immigrants arriving in America. She then vomits over the rail; the Atlantic wind blows it across the passengers admiring the view, while seabirds gather and Angela hangs limp and pale against the ship’s rail. The scene overturns the hopeful image of the harbor: the family is leaving the country that had represented arrival and possibility, but the crossing offers no easy passage to security. A week later they reach Moville in County Donegal, travel by bus to Belfast, and then continue to Toome in County Antrim. Leaving their trunk in a shop, the family walks two miles toward Grandpa McCourt’s house before dawn. Malachy carries the twins, who take turns crying from hunger; Angela repeatedly stops to rest on a stone wall. As the sky changes from red to blue, the children see unfamiliar creatures in the fields and ask what they are. Their father identifies them as cows, a small exchange that marks the children’s encounter with a rural homeland they do not yet know.

Return, Work, and Renewed Separation

The return does not resolve the family’s dependence on Malachy’s uncertain earnings. Later, with America in the war, he agrees to go to England after Christmas because he believes the cause must be just; he signs with an agent for factory work in Coventry, described by others as England’s most-bombed city. The promised wages make his departure appear to offer a route toward family support, and a shopkeeper extends Angela credit for basic groceries on the expectation that money will come back from England. When Malachy later leaves again, he has no money for the train. He fries four cuts of bread, wraps them in pages of the Limerick Chronicle, and puts two in each coat pocket before setting out to seek a lift on the Dublin road. Frank follows him down the lane and as far as Barrack Hill and St. Joseph’s Street, until Malachy turns and tells him to go home to Angela and his brothers. The departure leaves the household divided once more, with the boy charged to take care of those left behind.

Remittances and the Limits of Homecoming

A letter arrives saying Malachy has reached England safely and urging the boys to obey their mother and attend to their religious duties. The following week, a three-pound telegram money order briefly transforms the children’s expectations: they imagine fish and chips, jelly and custard, Saturday films at several Limerick cinemas, and even tea and cakes at the Savoy Café. The money is not a lasting change in their circumstances. No further order arrives, and Angela returns to begging at the St. Vincent de Paul Society while the children’s household remains marked by scarcity. The family’s route between New York, Ireland, and England thus has no simple direction of progress. Relatives’ money makes the return possible, the walk from Donegal to Toome embodies its immediate hardship, and the father’s later departures turn the promise of remittance into another source of waiting. The larger pattern culminates in Frank’s own planned emigration: after asking about passage to America, he is offered a place on the Irish Oak, sailing from Cork for fifty-five pounds, and tells Angela he will leave within weeks. His younger brother Michael asks whether they will all go someday, leaving the family’s movement toward America open as a hope rather than a completed reunion.