Name: ___________________
Hour: _____
Worksheet for “Typhoid Fever” from Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
pp. 366-371 of Elements of Literature
Instructions:
Read over this worksheet before reading “Typhoid Fever.”
Make a mental note of things you will need to look for as you read the story.
Once you have read the story, answer the questions below.
About the Author:
(also found on the bottom of p. 371)
“Frank McCourt (1930- ), who regards himself as more a New Yorker than an
Irishman, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the first child of Irish immigrants.
When Frank was four, the McCourts made a bad decision and moved back to
Ireland, where they lived in worse conditions than the ones they had fled in
Brooklyn. Eventually, Frank’s father abandoned his wife, Angela, and their
three surviving children.
Frank McCourt moved back to New York City at age nineteen. Ten
years later he began teaching writing to high school students. Encouraged by his
students to write about his own experiences, McCourt finally published his first
book, Angela’s Ashes, when he was sixty-six. The book dominated best-seller
lists and won a 1997 Pulitzer Prize.
When he was asked how he found such humor in his poverty-stricken
childhood, McCourt replied: ‘When you have nothing—no TV, no radio, no
music—you have only the language. So you use it. We were street kids—we
saw the absurdity and laughed at it. And we were fools; we were always
dreaming. Bacon and eggs—we dreamed of that.’”
Literal Questions: Find these answers within the text.
1.
List 3 new words or phrases that you learned while reading this story. What do they
mean? (If the book doesn’t give a definition, take a guess at the meaning of the word
based on its context and then check your answer by looking in a dictionary.)
(1)
(2)
(3)
2.
What is the setting of this story?
3.
Why is it forbidden for Frank and Patricia to talk to each other?
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Name: ___________________
Hour: _____
Worksheet for “Typhoid Fever” from Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
pp. 366-371 of Elements of Literature
4.
What do Frank and Patricia do to pass the time?
Interpretive Questions: Use cues in the text to help you make hypotheses about the story.
5.
What is happening, politically, in the backdrop of this story? How does this affect the
story and its characters?
6.
Do you notice anything unique about the use of dialogue in this story? If so, what
aspect(s) of the dialogue make it unique? How does this affect the overall flow, tone, and
characterization of the story?
7.
Why do you think Frank McCourt tells us the exact wording of the poem that Patricia
begins to read to Frank? Does this poem have a connection to the overall story?
8.
What is a highwayman? Why do you think the characters in this story connected with the
highwayman’s character/situation so much? (Think of Frank, Patricia, Seamus, and
Seamus’ wife and their reactions to the poem.)
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Name: ___________________
Hour: _____
Worksheet for “Typhoid Fever” from Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
pp. 366-371 of Elements of Literature
9.
Based on the story and the information given about Frank McCourt, how do you think
McCourt’s own life influenced this story? (Think about setting, storyline, characters,
culture…)
Applied Questions: Apply ideas from the story to your own life and point of view.
10.
What do you think of Seamus? If you were Frank, how would you feel about Seamus’
presence in the hospital?
11.
What does this story tell you about the affect literature (poems, books, Shakespeare) has
on our lives? (Think about how Patricia and Frank use Shakespeare and poems within the
story, as well as the impact that the highwayman poem has on Frank and Seamus.)
12.
If another, similar story was set in present-day America, how might the story be different
from this one?
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