The City We Became

by

N. K. Jemisin

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The City We Became makes teaching easy.

Conall McGuiness Character Analysis

A neo-Nazi friend of Matthew Houlihan’s, Conall is a young man with a waxed mustache, glasses, and many tattoos, one of which is a swastika. When he comes to stay with the Houlihan family, Aislyn notices that one of the Woman in White’s tendrils is attached to the back of his neck. Later that night, Aislyn unexpectedly encounters him, drunk, in her fenced back yard. He demeans, sexually harasses, and attempts to assault her. Aislyn summons the power of Staten Island to throw him through the backyard fence and walks away from the house. Conall’s assault initially makes Aislyn doubt both her father’s worldview and the Woman in White’s benevolence. When Paolo comes to find and help Aislyn, the Woman in White appears and accuses Paolo of “assault” against her people. Aislyn’s recent assault and her racist stereotypes about non-white men like Paolo combine to make her suspicious and angry, and she attacks Paolo. Aislyn’s negative reaction to Paolo after Conall’s assault illustrates how Aislyn’s racist upbring causes her to misdirect justified anger at her abusers toward non-white and foreign people.

Conall McGuiness Quotes in The City We Became

The The City We Became quotes below are all either spoken by Conall McGuiness or refer to Conall McGuiness. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cities and Gentrification Theme Icon
).
Chapter 10 Quotes

Aislyn loves her father; of course she does, but Conall is right on one level: her whole life, Aislyn has had to scrape and struggle to maintain her own emotional real estate. If she doesn’t leave this house soon, her father will snatch it all up and double the rent on anything he doesn’t want her to feel.

Conall is very, very wrong, however, about something important. He thinks that the meek, shy girl that her father has described, and whom he is currently terrorizing, is all there is to Aislyn. It isn’t.

The rest of her? Is as big as a city.

Related Characters: Aislyn Houlihan (Staten Island), The Woman in White (The Enemy) (R’lyeh), Matthew Houlihan, Conall McGuiness
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:

Everything that happens everywhere else happens on Staten Island, too, but here people try not to see the indecencies, the domestic violence, the drug use. And then, having denied what’s right in front of their eyes, they tell themselves that at least they’re living in a good place full of good people. At least it’s not the city.

[…]

Evil comes from elsewhere, Matthew Houlihan believes. Evil is other people. She will leave him this illusion, mostly because she envies his ability to keep finding comfort in simple, black-and-white views of the world. Aislyn’s ability to do the same is rapidly eroding.

Related Characters: Aislyn Houlihan (Staten Island), The Woman in White (The Enemy) (R’lyeh), Paolo (São Paolo), Matthew Houlihan, Conall McGuiness
Related Symbols: Tendrils, Better New York Foundation
Page Number: 281
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

There is an instant in which Aislyn’s mind tries to signal an alarm, doom, existential threat, all the usual fight-or-flight signals that are the job of the lizard brain. And if the gush of substance had been different somehow—something hideous, maybe—she would have started screaming.

Three things stop her. The first and most atavistic is that everything in her life has programmed her to associate evil with specific, easily definable things. Dark skin. Ugly people with scars or eyepatches or wheelchairs. Men. The Woman in White is the visual opposite of everything Aislyn has been taught to fear, and so . . . Even though intellectually Aislyn now has proof that what she’s seeing is just a guise, and the Woman in White’s true form could be anyone or anything . . .

. . . Aislyn also thinks, Well, she looks all right.

Related Characters: Aislyn Houlihan (Staten Island), The Woman in White (The Enemy) (R’lyeh), Matthew Houlihan, Conall McGuiness
Related Symbols: Tendrils
Page Number: 333
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

[Aislyn] can see [Hong’s] filthy, foreign foot planted square on the dill.

The anger comes on faster than Aislyn’s ever gotten angry in her life. It is as if Conall has broken a dam within her, and now every bit of fury she has ever suppressed over thirty years just needs the barest hair trigger to explode forth.

Related Characters: Bronca Siwanoy (The Bronx), Aislyn Houlihan (Staten Island), The Woman in White (The Enemy) (R’lyeh), Brooklyn Thomason (Brooklyn), Padmini Prakash (Queens), Hong (Hong Kong), Matthew Houlihan, Conall McGuiness
Page Number: 403
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The City We Became LitChart as a printable PDF.
The City We Became PDF

Conall McGuiness Quotes in The City We Became

The The City We Became quotes below are all either spoken by Conall McGuiness or refer to Conall McGuiness. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cities and Gentrification Theme Icon
).
Chapter 10 Quotes

Aislyn loves her father; of course she does, but Conall is right on one level: her whole life, Aislyn has had to scrape and struggle to maintain her own emotional real estate. If she doesn’t leave this house soon, her father will snatch it all up and double the rent on anything he doesn’t want her to feel.

Conall is very, very wrong, however, about something important. He thinks that the meek, shy girl that her father has described, and whom he is currently terrorizing, is all there is to Aislyn. It isn’t.

The rest of her? Is as big as a city.

Related Characters: Aislyn Houlihan (Staten Island), The Woman in White (The Enemy) (R’lyeh), Matthew Houlihan, Conall McGuiness
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:

Everything that happens everywhere else happens on Staten Island, too, but here people try not to see the indecencies, the domestic violence, the drug use. And then, having denied what’s right in front of their eyes, they tell themselves that at least they’re living in a good place full of good people. At least it’s not the city.

[…]

Evil comes from elsewhere, Matthew Houlihan believes. Evil is other people. She will leave him this illusion, mostly because she envies his ability to keep finding comfort in simple, black-and-white views of the world. Aislyn’s ability to do the same is rapidly eroding.

Related Characters: Aislyn Houlihan (Staten Island), The Woman in White (The Enemy) (R’lyeh), Paolo (São Paolo), Matthew Houlihan, Conall McGuiness
Related Symbols: Tendrils, Better New York Foundation
Page Number: 281
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

There is an instant in which Aislyn’s mind tries to signal an alarm, doom, existential threat, all the usual fight-or-flight signals that are the job of the lizard brain. And if the gush of substance had been different somehow—something hideous, maybe—she would have started screaming.

Three things stop her. The first and most atavistic is that everything in her life has programmed her to associate evil with specific, easily definable things. Dark skin. Ugly people with scars or eyepatches or wheelchairs. Men. The Woman in White is the visual opposite of everything Aislyn has been taught to fear, and so . . . Even though intellectually Aislyn now has proof that what she’s seeing is just a guise, and the Woman in White’s true form could be anyone or anything . . .

. . . Aislyn also thinks, Well, she looks all right.

Related Characters: Aislyn Houlihan (Staten Island), The Woman in White (The Enemy) (R’lyeh), Matthew Houlihan, Conall McGuiness
Related Symbols: Tendrils
Page Number: 333
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

[Aislyn] can see [Hong’s] filthy, foreign foot planted square on the dill.

The anger comes on faster than Aislyn’s ever gotten angry in her life. It is as if Conall has broken a dam within her, and now every bit of fury she has ever suppressed over thirty years just needs the barest hair trigger to explode forth.

Related Characters: Bronca Siwanoy (The Bronx), Aislyn Houlihan (Staten Island), The Woman in White (The Enemy) (R’lyeh), Brooklyn Thomason (Brooklyn), Padmini Prakash (Queens), Hong (Hong Kong), Matthew Houlihan, Conall McGuiness
Page Number: 403
Explanation and Analysis: