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
Nomi recalls turning 13 three days before Tash and Ian left town. Nomi knew that Ray and Trudie were having tense discussions all the time, but she didn’t really understand their content; she suspected that Tash had begun selling drugs. After one night when Tash stayed out very late, Nomi woke up to find that Trudie had gone to shelve books in the library and Ray had gone for a drive. When Nomi woke Tash up, she cursed until Nomi fled the room, sobbing. Nomi felt sure that Tash was eternally damned.
It’s significant that Nomi turns 13 just as Tash leaves—at this age, Nomi is becoming an adolescent who can take over her sister’s rebellious role in the family. But right now, Nomi’s incomprehension of Tash’s existential anguish shows the extent to which Nomi is still a child.
Themes
When Trudie came home, both Nomi and Tash were sobbing in their respective rooms. Nomi heard Tash wailing to Trudie that everything in her life was “a fucking lie” and that the sense of falseness was “killing [her].” Nomi was astonished to hear Trudie agree with Tash and start crying herself. Nomi couldn’t figure out what was killing Tash or why Trudie wasn’t mad. She concluded that Tash was repenting of her drug-pushing lifestyle and was going to come back into the fold.
Trudie’s admission shows that, although she’s not outwardly rebellious like Tash, she’s just as disillusioned about life within the Mennonite community. This moment makes the philosophical gulf between Trudie and Ray, who still believes in many of the church’s tenets, abundantly clear.
Themes
For a while, Nomi heard Tash and Trudie talking in low voices. Then Trudie went into the kitchen to talk to Ray. When Nomi knocked on Tash’s door, her sister welcomed her uncharacteristically kindly and suggested they listen to a record together. Nomi sobbed that she didn’t want Tash to go to hell, and Tash hugged her and told her that “God is love.” Nomi thought that Tash was “doomed.”
Nomi sees Tash’s new-age talk as evidence of sin, but later on, this is exactly the way that Ray and Trudie will conceptualize their own faith. While Nomi never decides if she believes in God, she finds peace in her parents’ loving, accepting form of religion.
Themes
Soon, Ian came to pick Tash up. With a “tender genuine smile,” Tash gave all her records to Nomi. Trudie packed up some blankets and food, and loaded them into Ian’s truck. The scene reminded Nomi of Trudie’s bedtime stories of their Mennonite ancestors fleeing Russia in the middle of the night. Trudie and Nomi hugged Tash and Ian goodbye, but Ray wouldn’t come out of his bedroom.
It’s important that Nomi and Tash reconcile just as Tash leaves. This moment illustrates what Nomi will realize by the novel’s end: that in order to coexist and thrive, the family has to leave East Village. It’s ironic that although Tash’s ancestors fled an oppressive regime in Russia, she now has to leave the very community they established to escape its intolerance.
Themes
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In the present day, Nomi takes her first birth control pill and lays in bed, feeling anxious about her life. She hears Ray come upstairs and lie down in his own bed. It’s funny that both of them take turns lying awake and bed and sneaking out at night to drive around in the dark. Ray snores horribly loudly, so Nomi goes into his room and pushes him over on his side. She sees the plastic bird sitting on his dresser, and remarks to herself that his graying curtains need to be washed.
Nomi’s relationship with her father is a series of missed connections. Even though she’s aware that Ray is grieving as much as she is, they can never fully share their feelings.
Themes
Later that night, Nomi sneaks out to go swimming in the pits with Travis. They float on inner tubes and speculate on what it would feel like to go crazy. Nomi thinks it would be “sad and easy…like losing a friend.” Travis responds with a long quote from Kafka, and tells Nomi about his aunt who went insane. They start singing a country song about an old woman stuck in her hometown and obsessed with her former lovers, and Travis says it could be about Nomi. Nomi feels like crying, but Travis has told her “that I was boring when I was offended, and to be boring was the ultimate crime,” so she holds the tears back. She and Travis practice standing up on their inner tubes together.
Travis is trying to establish himself as an expert—backed by literature—in life’s dilemmas, but it’s actually Nomi who is struggling with mental instability, in herself and in Ray. Her own blunt description is much more evocative than his quote. Nomi’s inability to reveal her feelings for Travis prevent their relationship from being healthy or constructive for her.
Themes
