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Angela Davis
Mrs. Conlon is Dr. Conlon’s widow. After Merry Levov’s bomb explodes at the village post office and Dr. Conlon is killed in the blast, the Swede goes to visit Mrs. Conlon to give his condolences and apologize to her for the havoc his daughter has wreaked on their lives. Mrs. Conlon accepts his apology with grace and humility. However, when she insinuates that the Levovs will never recover from their grief at losing Merry, who has since gone into hiding, the Swede doubts whether Mrs. Conlon’s response was as selfless and kind as he originally thought.
Mrs. Conlon Quotes in American Pastoral
The American Pastoral quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Conlon or refer to Mrs. Conlon. 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:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
Mrs. Conlon had said, “You are as much the victims of this tragedy as we are. The difference is that for us, though recovery will take time, we will survive as a family. We will survive as a loving family. We will survive with our memories intact and with our memories to sustain us. It will not be any easier for us than it will be for you to make sense of something so senseless. But we are the same family we were when Fred was here, and we will survive.”
The clarity and force with which she implied that the Swede and his family would not survive made him wonder, in the weeks that followed, if her kindness and her compassion were so all-encompassing as he had wanted at first to believe.
He never went to see her again.
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Mrs. Conlon Quotes in American Pastoral
The American Pastoral quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Conlon or refer to Mrs. Conlon. 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:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
Mrs. Conlon had said, “You are as much the victims of this tragedy as we are. The difference is that for us, though recovery will take time, we will survive as a family. We will survive as a loving family. We will survive with our memories intact and with our memories to sustain us. It will not be any easier for us than it will be for you to make sense of something so senseless. But we are the same family we were when Fred was here, and we will survive.”
The clarity and force with which she implied that the Swede and his family would not survive made him wonder, in the weeks that followed, if her kindness and her compassion were so all-encompassing as he had wanted at first to believe.
He never went to see her again.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
