How does you language of the selection and it's use of vocabulary contribute to its multiple tones? How do these tones help increase your understanding of the themes , and help reveal the social and political context of the era in which the narrative take

From Chapter VIII

The room next to me is empty till one morning a girl’s voice says, Yoo hoo, who’s there?

I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or someone in the room beyond.

Yoo hoo, boy with the typhoid, are you awake?

I am.

Are you better?

I am.

Well, why are you here?

I don’t know. I’m still in the bed. They stick needles in me and give me medicine.

What do you look like?

I wonder, What kind of a question is that? I don’t know what to tell her.

Yoo hoo, are you there, typhoid boy?

I am.

What’s your name?

Frank.

That’s a good name. My name is Patricia Madigan. How old are you?

Ten.

Oh. She sounds disappointed.

But I’ll be eleven in August, next month.

Well, that’s better than ten. I’ll be fourteen in September. Do you want to know why I’m in the Fever Hospital?

I do.

I have diphtheria and something else.

What’s something else?

They don’t know. They think I have a disease from foreign parts because my father used to be in Africa. I nearly died. Are you going to tell me what you look like?

I have black hair.

You and millions.

I have brown eyes with bits of green that’s called hazel.

You and thousands.

I have stitches on the back of my right hand and my two feet where they put in the soldier’s blood.

Oh, God, did they?

They did. You won’t be able to stop marching and saluting.

There’s a swish of habit and click of beads and then Sister Rita’s voice. Now, now, what’s this? There’s to be no talking between two rooms especially when it’s a boy and a girl. Do you hear me, Patricia?

I do, Sister.

Do you hear me, Francis?

I do, Sister.

You could be giving thanks for your two remarkable recoveries. You could be saying the rosary. You could be reading The Little Messenger of the Sacred Heart that’s beside your beds. Don’t let me come back and find you talking.

She comes into my room and wags her finger at me. Especially you, Francis, after thousands of boys prayed for you at the Confraternity. Give thanks, Francis, give thanks.

She leaves and there’s silence for awhile. Then Patricia whispers, Give thanks, Francis, give thanks, and say your rosary, Francis, and I laugh so hard a nurse runs in to see if I’m all right. She’s a very stern nurse from the County Kerry and she frightens me. What’s this, Francis? Laughing? What is there to laugh about? Are you and that Madigan girl talking? I’ll report you to Sister Rita. There’s to be no laughing for you could be doing serious damage to your internal apparatus.

She plods out and Patricia whispers again in a heavy Kerry accent, No laughing, Francis, you could be doin’ serious damage to your internal apparatus. Say your rosary, Francis, and pray for your internal apparatus.

...

Every day I can’t wait for the doctors and nurses to leave me alone so I can learn a new verse from Patricia and find out what’s happening to the highwayman and the landlord’s red-lipped daughter. I love the poem because it’s exciting and almost as good as my two lines of Shakespeare. The redcoats are after the highwayman because they know he told her, I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.

I’d love to do that myself, come by moonlight for Patricia in the next room, though hell should bar the way. She’s ready to read the last few verses when in comes the nurse from Kerry shouting at her, shouting at me, I told ye there was to be no talking between room. Diphtheria is never allowed to talk to typhoid and visa versa. I warned ye. And she calls out, Seamus, take this one. Take the by. Sister Rita said one more word out of him and upstairs with him. We gave ye a warning to stop the blathering but ye wouldn’t. Take the by, Seamus, take him.

Ah, now nurse, sure isn’t he harmless. ’Tis only a bit o’ poetry.

Take that by, Seamus, take him at once.

He bends over me and whispers, Ah, God, I’m sorry, Frankie. Here’s your English history book. He slips the book under my shirt and lifts me from the bed. He whispers that I’m a feather. I try to see Patricia when we pass through her room but all I can make out is a blur of dark head on a pillow.

Sister Rita stops us in the hall to tell me I’m a great disappointment to her, that she expected me to be a good boy after what God had done for me, after all the prayers said by hundreds of boys at the Confraternity, after all the care from the nuns and nurses of the Fever Hospital, after the way they let my mother and father in to see me, a thing rarely allowed, and this is how I repaid them lying in the bed reciting silly poetry back and forth with Patricia Madigan knowing very well there was a ban on all talk between typhoid and diphtheria. She says I’ll have plenty of time to reflect on my sins in the big ward upstairs and I should beg God’s forgiveness for my disobedience reciting a pagan English poem about a thief on a horse and a maiden with red lips who commits a terrible sin when I could have been praying or reading the life of a saint. She made it her business to read that poem so she did and I’d be well advised to tell the priest in confession.

The Kerry nurse follows us upstairs gasping and holding on to the banister. She tells me I better not get the notion she’ll be running up to this part of the world every time I have a little pain or a twinge.

There are twenty beds in the ward, all white, all empty. The nurse tells Seamus put me at the far end of the ward against the wall to make sure I don’t talk to anyone who might be passing the door, which is very unlikely since there isn’t another soul on this whole floor. She tells Seamus this was the fever ward during the Great Famine long ago and only God knows how many died here brought in too late for anything but a wash before they were buried and there are stories of cries and moans in the far reaches of the night. She says ’twould break your heart to think of what the English did to us, that if they didn’t put the blight on the potato they didn’t do much to take it off. No pity. No feeling at all for the people that died in this very ward, children suffering and dying here while the English feasted on roast beef and guzzled the best of wine in their big houses, little children with their mouths all green from trying to eat the grass in the fields beyond, God bless us and save us and guard us from future famines.

Seamus says ’twas a terrible thing indeed and he wouldn’t want to be walking these halls in the dark with all the little green mouths gaping at him. The nurse takes my temperature, ’Tis up a bit, have a good sleep for yourself now that you’re away from the chatter with Patricia Madigan below who will never know a gray hair.

She shakes her head at Seamus and he gives her a sad shake back.

Nurses and nuns never think you know what they’re talking about. If you’re ten going on eleven you’re supposed to be simple like my uncle Pat Sheehan who was dropped on his head. You can’t ask questions. You can’t show you understand what the nurse said about Patricia Madigan, that she’s going to die, and you can’t show you want to cry over this girl who taught you a lovely poem which the nun says is bad.

Excerpted from Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt, published by Simon & Schuster.

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