Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Complicated Kindness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religion and Dogma
Family and Home
Community and Coming of Age
Narrative and Storytelling
Christian Salvation vs. Earthly Joy
Summary
Analysis
At night, Nomi likes to ride her bike to the American border. She watches trains rush by, covered in graffiti from kids in other cities. She also goes to the fairground to look at the things that teenagers write on the walls. Sometimes she rides along the highways and hangs on to RVs to catch a ride. Once a little girl sees her from the back window and holds up each of her stuffed animals for Nomi to see.
Nomi’s nighttime escapades demonstrate her curious spirit. But they also hint at her loneliness—she’s rarely accompanied by a friend—and her recklessness, which goes unchecked by any parental guidance.
Themes
Today, Nomi decides to go around town and say goodbye to everyone, even though she has no plans to leave. First she visits the general store and tells her classmate Gloria that she’s going to the city. Gloria gives Nomi a free Coke; she is recently engaged to a boy who used to chase Nomi and hit her with sticks. Gloria mentions a new picture of Nomi hanging in the village museum. Nomi had been reluctantly volunteering as a pretend pioneer, churning fake butter and surreptitiously smoking, when her cigarette lit up her bonnet. In the photograph, she is running to a barrel to dunk her burning head. Gloria says it’s too bad that their stoner phases didn’t coincide.
In a sense, Nomi is rehearsing to leave town, performing a pretend version of the choice that she’s not yet ready to make. The photograph of Nomi in period dress with her head on fire is extremely evocative. It shows, in both a symbolic and literal way, how living in the past and refusing to acknowledge the present is ultimately self-destructive. Nomi is completely cognizant of this fact when it comes to her religious community, but less so when it comes to her refusal to reckon with the changes in her family.
Themes
Nomi leaves the general store and walks to Mrs. Peters’s house. Mrs. Peters gives Nomi homemade popcorn and reminisces about her son, Clayton, who was Nomi’s age but tragically drowned as a child. All her appliances are white, because she thinks colored furniture is sinful. Nomi cuts Mrs. Peters’s bangs and changes a light bulb. She asks lots of questions about Clayton, because she knows Mrs. Peters likes to answer them, and they speculate on what he might have done after graduating high school. Mrs. Peters says that she can’t wait to see Clayton in Heaven. Nomi asks Mrs. Peters whether, if she had remarried after her husband’s death, she would live with the first or second husband in Heaven, but Mrs. Peters avoids the question.
Providing comfort to a widow and acting as a stand-in for her dead son is a task requiring empathy, tact, and strength, but Nomi interacts with Mrs. Peters as though it’s easy. Although she likes to pose as a rebellious, carefree teenager, moments like this show that she possesses a maturity and strength of character far beyond her years—and far beyond Travis, who becomes uncomfortable at any display of emotion or vulnerability.
Themes
After leaving Mrs. Peters, Nomi visits Lids in the hospital. She carefully removes a pile of homework that the mean nurse has dropped on Lids’s stomach. Lids has lost her voice, so Nomi updates her on the outside world, amusing her with the news of Gloria’s engagement. The nurse arrives and says that if Lids is laughing she must not really be sick. Nomi says that the nurse should be kinder and make sure Lids gets softer food. The nurse responds dismissively that Nomi is full of lies, and Nomi throws a container of apple juice at her. The nurse says that Nomi is as crazy as her mother.
Nomi’s impulsive behavior here contrasts with her earlier display of maturity, but neither incident cancels the other out. By showing the contradictory traits in many characters, including herself, Nomi establishes her narrative as a protest against rigid paradigms of good and evil. The nurse’s comment about Trudie foreshadows Nomi’s eventual revelation about what drove Trudie out East Village, and shows that Nomi’s conception of her mother is much different than the town’s.
Themes
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A nice nurse comes into the room and tells Nomi to leave and come back in a little while. She says that if something like this happens again, Nomi should see her personally to find a solution. Nomi feels overwhelmed by her kindness.
That Nomi is so moved by this one instance of empathy implicitly suggests how often she feels alone and unprotected in the wake of her mother’s disappearance.
Themes
