Neeley Nolan Character Analysis in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Francie’s younger brother and the second child of Katie and Johnny. Cornelius John “Neeley” Nolan is one year younger than Francie and is born one week after Francie’s first birthday. He is also the child whom Katie favors the most. Though her mother does her best to disguise this, Francie senses it. Unlike Francie, Neeley is born strong, healthy, and handsome and grows up to look almost identical to their father. When they are children, Neeley assists Francie when they go rag-picking in the building where their mother works. Unlike his sister, Neeley is only an average student. Nevertheless, Katie is more insistent with him than with Francie about his finishing high school. The family hopes that he will become a doctor because his name seems befitting of one. Neeley, however, has little interest in studying and is eager to work and help the family financially as he approaches his teen years. He works first in McGarrity’s, peeling boiled eggs and cutting hunks of cheese, as part of the bar’s offer of free lunch to its patrons. He claims to have an ambition to become a stock broker, though this is only due to the allure of what looks like fast and easy income. He inherits his father’s looks and, later, also becomes a singer and a piano player. When they are teenagers, Francie notices that he wears a union label in his shirt, just as their father did, and calls her “Prima Donna.”

Neeley Nolan Quotes in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The A Tree Grows in Brooklyn quotes below are all either spoken by Neeley Nolan or refer to Neeley Nolan. 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:

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Life was going too swiftly for Johnny. He had a wife and two babies before

he was old enough to vote. His life was finished before it had a chance to begin. He was doomed and no one knew it better than Johnny Nolan. Katie had the same hardships as Johnny and she was nineteen, two years younger. It might be said that she, too, was doomed. Her life, too, was over before it began. But there the similarity ended. Johnny knew he was doomed and accepted it. Katie wouldn't accept it. She started a new life where her old one left off. She exchanged her tenderness for capability. She gave up her dreams

and took over hard realities in their place. Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.

Related Characters: Neeley Nolan, Johnny Nolan, Katie Nolan

Page Number and Citation: 96-97

Explanation and Analysis:

A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap

route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can

forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion

and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the

cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in

the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she

had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving

of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she

lacked the courage to be otherwise.

Related Characters: Francie Nolan, Neeley Nolan, The Doctor , The Nurse

Page Number and Citation: 147

Explanation and Analysis:

He buttoned up his coat jauntily and Francie saw that he wore their father's signet ring. It was true then—what Granma had said: that the Rommely women had the gift of seeing the ghosts of their beloved dead. Francie saw her

father.

Related Characters: Francie Nolan, Neeley Nolan, Johnny Nolan, Katie Nolan, Mary Rommely

Page Number and Citation: 490

Explanation and Analysis: