McCarthyism and American Cold War Ideology in Irish-American Autobiographical Writing

Abstract

This article explores the various ways in which the protagonist of Frank McCourt’s autobiographical account ’Tis, A Memoir confronts the McCarthyite proceedings and their unsettling consequences at times of utmost conservatism in America. It addresses his negotiation of an ultimately alienated ethnic identity, arguing that the protagonist’s fractured self not only reflects the slippery ground upon which McCarthyite practices are founded, but is also brought about by it. Beyond this analysis, however, the article is set to problematize the very status of McCourt’s autobiographical writing by assessing the memoir’s narrative codes in association with its content and purported readership. Specifically, the proposal evaluates the fictional strategies on which it is constructed, as well as the inconsistencies inherent in the narrative depiction of the character’s partial assimilation into an eventual Irish-American national identity. The proposal ultimately assays McCourt’s memoir as a product and reworking of the ideological tenets characteristic of McCarthyism and the early Cold War period.