Independant Reading Blow#6: 'Tis - Characters

Frank McCourt as a character is rather innoncent and naive, in a way. He is quick to go along with whatever is happening, partly because he never knows what to do. He figures things out throughout the course of the book, but he could have benefited from some of his later knowledge earlier on.
There are three characters in Frank McCourt's 'Tis that influence McCourt the most. These are his girlfriend Alberta "Mike" Small, Horace another warehouse worker, and his father. There are an assortment of other smaller characters, from whom McCourt learns, including the Biltmore Hotel's Puerto Rican kitchen staff, Italian-American soldiers, and inner city Manhattan high school kids, but none touch him quiet the same way these three do.
Mike Small changes the way McCourt thinks about women. Small is a fellow NYU student, who meets McCourt in one of their classes. He describes her as having a "figure that you only see in films", and is over the moon when he gets a smile from her. Before dating her, he viewed women mainly as a gateway to sex. However, afterwards, he was more open to the concept of a long term relationship with a woman, rather than a one night stand at least. For a while, McCourt's life revolved around Small.
Horace the dock worker plays an important role for McCourt. He acts as a fatherly figure while McCourt is going through tough academic, social, and financial times in New York. The only problem: Horace was black. This earned both McCourt and Horace a lot of negative attention from the other dockworkers, turning their father-son like relationship into something more special, that was worth defending. McCourt even says that he wishes Horace could've been his father, because Horace encourages his son to go to university in Canada.
The third, and probably most influential character on McCourt is his father. This is because McCourt views his father as the source of all his problems in life. His father's alcoholism cost McCourt, his mother and brothers their happiness and their economic security, pushing them further into poverty. The most shaping force on McCourt's life was the absence of his father.