Motivation is strong enough to activate goal-seeking behaviour, which begins with agitated feelings and ended with behaviour that satisfied the needs. Frank and his
family have to face the truth that his father cannot overcome the drinking habit that lead them into poverty and starvation. This causes Frank to be able to satisfy
himself and his family to get food to eat. Thus he needs to find jobs to buy some food that he and his family need.
b. The Family’s Economic Condition
The second problem that causes Frank to struggle for life is his family’s economic condition. Because of his father’s drinking habit, the family is left to earn
money to fulfill their daily needs. Like other people, Frank also needs to fulfil the physiological needs.
According to Maslow, the physiological needs are the most basic needs in our life. These needs are the needs for food, liquid, shelter, sex, sleep and oxygen. When
someone is hungry, needs love or shelter, he is absolutely going to demand food first and he will ignore other needs until the need of food is fulfilled Maslow 38.
Frank’s family needs enough food to eat but they never have enough money to buy some. Frank needs food to grow up soon so that he can help the family to find a job
to solve the family’s financial problem. Frank already suffers from hunger when he is still a little boy. He knows
that his father never has enough money to feed the family because he barely has a job and he knows that his father chooses to spend all his money only on drinking in
the pub. The apartment is empty and I wander between the two rooms, the bedroom
and he kitchen. My father is out looking for a job and my mother is at the hospital with Malachy. I wish I had something to eat but there’s nothing in
the icebox but cabbage leaves floating in the melted ice 12. Angela is frustrated with the fact that she has no money to buy food for her
children. On the other hand, Frank’s father does not give her money, so that Angela and her children have to walk from one pub to another just to find him.
We go back through the long streets of Brooklyn. The twins hold up their bottles and cry for more water and sugar. Malachy says he’s hungry and
Mam tells him wait a little, we’ll get the money from Dad and we’ll have a nice supper 20.
When the family chooses to move to Limerick, Frank imagines that they will have a better life than the one in New York. Unfortunately, their life in
Limerick is even more miserable than before and still Frank’s father barely has a job. Then, Angela has to go to St. Vincent de Paul Society where many poor
families in Limerick ask for dockets so they are able to get free groceries from a shop for a week.
The man in the middle says he’s giving Mam a docket to get a week’s groceries at McGrath’s shop on Parnell Street. There will be tea, sugar,
flour, milk, butter and a separate docket for a bag of coal from Sutton’s coal yard on the Dock Road 67.
Moreover, when Frank and his brothers get sick, the only place that they can go to is the Dispensary. One day, Frank suffers from the infection between his
two eyes and Angela takes him to the Dispensary so that the doctor is able to cure his disease and give him free medicines.
The eyes don’t heal and she takes me to the Dispensary where the poor people see doctors and get their medicines. It’s a place to apply for public
assistance when a father is dead or disappeared and there’s no dole money, no wages 257.
When Frank grows older, still the family’s economic condition never gets
better than before. Still his father barely has a good job; only sign dole money from Labour Exchange. The family still depends on the charity from St. Vincent de Paul
Society and even from the Dispensary. Then, the worse thing happens when Frank sees his mother begging outside the priest’s house for any left over food from the
priests. It’s a gray day, the church is gray and the small crowd of people outside the
door of the priest’s house is gray. They’re waiting to beg for any food left over from the priest’s house. There in the middle of the crowd in her dirty
gray coat is my mother. This is my own mother, begging. This is worse than the dole, St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Dispensary 288.
Because the family has no money to pay the rent, the building owner then asks the family to move. They have not paid the house rent for a month and it is
time for them to leave the house. The rent man is losing his patience. He tells Mam, Four weeks behind you
are missus. That’s one pound two shillings 320.
Unfortunately, before they move from the house Frank’s brother, Malachy Jr. breaks the house’s wall and burn it since they have no money to buy some turf
or coal. The building owner is very furious with Angela and asks the family to move from the house.
“Out, missus, I’m puttin’ ye out. One week from today I’ll knock on this door and I want to find nobody at home, everybody out never to return”
322. Then Angela’s mother takes them to Laman Griffin’s house. Laman is
Angela’s cousin and when they arrive there, he allows the family to live with him. “There’s trouble. Angela is getting’ evicted with the children an’ ‘tis delvin’
out of the heaven. They need a bit of shelter till they get on their feet an’ I have no rooms for them. You can put them up in the loft if you like but that
wouldn’t do because the small one would n’t be able to climb and they’d fall down an’ get killed so you go up there an’ they can move in here” 323.
It can be seen that the family’s economic condition is already miserable before they move to Limerick. Even after the family stays in Limerick, still their
economic condition never gets better. Though the family already receives the dole tickets and the docket from St. Vincent de Paul Society, still they are unable to
fulfill the daily needs. Even Angela becomes a beggar in order to find some food for her children where it makes Frank feel sad because he happens to see Angela
begging in front of the priests’ house. It happens because Frank and Malachy Jr. grow older where they need more food to eat in the growing process and Angela
gives birth to two other babies named Michael and Alphie. They even have to move from the rent house because they are unable to pay the rent for a month and
as a result the building owner asks them to move. The family are quite lucky because Laman Griffin allows them to stay with him although then he torments the
family and treats Angela and Frank disrespectably. This condition motivates Frank to grow up soon and struggle for life because he does not want his family to live in
a poor and starved condition while other people can have a good, comfortable and nice life. Frank needs to fulfil his physiological needs because his parents are
unable to fulfil it and even they need a shelter to live in.
c. The Society’s Treatment toward Frank’s Family
