My Days of Anger by James T. Farrell
**Overview of My Days of Anger by James T. Farrell**
"My Days of Anger" is a novel by James T. Farrell, part of the O'Neill-O'Flaherty series, that explores the formative years of young Danny O'Neill in 1920s Chicago. As a Künstlerroman, it focuses on Danny's quest for identity as an artist, set against the backdrop of his struggles with his Irish-Catholic upbringing. The narrative unfolds from 1924 to 1927, detailing Danny's transition from aspiring lawyer to a burgeoning writer, as he seeks to break free from the constraints of his family's middle-class values and Catholic faith. Throughout the story, Danny grapples with feelings of guilt over his more privileged upbringing compared to his siblings and confronts the superficiality of his surrogate father's business ethics.
As Danny engages with university life, he experiences a profound shift in perspective, questioning the morality of his environment and the limitations of his faith. His journey takes him through moments of youthful recklessness, leading to a deeper understanding of himself and the struggles of those around him. By the novel's conclusion, Danny emerges as a more mature figure, committed to using his art as a means to honor and elevate the lives of his family and community. Farrell's work reflects the broader artist's dilemma in a society that often prioritizes practicality over artistic sensitivity, making "My Days of Anger" a poignant exploration of personal growth and the pursuit of creative integrity.
On this Page
My Days of Anger by James T. Farrell
First published: 1943
The Work
My Days of Anger, one of the five novels in James T. Farrell’s O’Neill-O’Flaherty series, chronicles the lives of two Chicago Irish-Catholic families with young Danny O’Neill as the central character. Published fourth but coming last in the chronology of Danny’s life, My Days of Anger is a Künstlerroman; that is, a novel of a young protagonist’s developing an identity as an artist. Set on Chicago’s South Side from 1924 to 1927, the novel opens with Danny working nights and attending the University of Chicago days while initially aspiring to become a lawyer. As the novel closes, Danny has rejected this goal, the middle-class values of his family, his Catholicism, and the prejudices of his neighborhood, leaving Chicago for New York to become a writer.
As he develops, Danny undergoes numerous emotional and intellectual changes. Having grown up in the O’Flaherty household with a doting uncle and grandmother because his immediate family is too poor to keep him, Danny wrestles with the guilt of having enjoyed more advantages than his numerous siblings and learns to appreciate the struggles of his parents. He sees beyond the business ethics of his Uncle Al, a traveling salesman and his surrogate father, who, though meaning well, is pretentious and shallow. At the university, reading philosophy along with much Romantic poetry, he finds that Catholicism fails to explain a world he views as brutal and unjust. In the name of gaining experience, he drinks and carouses with prostitutes but soon realizes his immaturity, escaping the dissipation that plagues many of his friends. Farrell treats much of Danny’s thought and behavior as the rebellion of an overly sensitive adolescent, but by the novel’s end, Danny matures into an intellectual worthy of respect. Whereas he initially denounces and ridicules his family and friends, he comes to understand their difficulties and vows to redeem their meager lives through his art.
Danny O’Neill is very much an autobiographical character whose experience parallels the young James T. Farrell’s. Danny’s immigrant grandmother, his working-class parents, his deluded uncle, his fellow university students, and the young toughs on the streets all contribute to re-creating the Irish-Catholic Chicago neighborhood where Farrell grew up and that provides the setting for most of his work. As fiction, My Days of Anger exemplifies the artist’s dilemma in an urban America where money and practicality are valued over sensitivity, imagination, and intellectual endeavor.
Bibliography
Branch, Edgar M. James T. Farrell. New York: Twayne, 1971.
Butler, Robert. “The Christian Roots of Farrell’s O’Neill and Carr Novels.” Renascence: Essays on Value in Literature 34, no. 2 (Winter, 1982): 81-98.
Fanning, Charles. “Death and Revery in James T. Farrell’s O’Neill-O’Flaherty Novels.” In The Incarnate Imagination: Essays in Theology, the Arts, and Social Sciences, edited by Ray B. Brown. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988.