A Complicated Kindness

by

Miriam Toews

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A Complicated Kindness: Chapter Four Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Ray always wears large glasses, which make him look a bit confused and as if as if he’s about to do some welding. Nomi always washes and folds his laundry, a chore she enjoys because she sometimes finds interesting things in his pockets. Today, Ray is sitting outside when she gets home. He tells Nomi he wants to have a talk about her future but doesn’t say anything else, so she pats his head and goes inside.
Ray’s mild-mannered, almost deferential demeanor contrasts with patriarchal expectations for Mennonite men, and is one of his most endearing qualities. Yet the apathy into which he sinks after his wife’s departure means he can’t provide Nomi with the guidance she desperately needs.
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Nomi remembers that a few weeks after Trudie left home, Ray began to build a new garbage hutch—something that Trudie always wanted him to do—while she sat upstairs listening to Led Zeppelin. Both Nomi and Ray responded to their grief calmly, unlike Nomi’s grandmother, who broke down in public places after her husband died. One day, Ray set up the finished garbage hutch at the end of the driveway; he and Nomi waited for the garbage men to arrive and be amazed. However, they thought that the hutch was garbage and threw it into the truck while Ray and Nomi watched.
For Nomi, the physical objects of the house are often representative of her family’s breakdown. By building the garbage hutch, Ray tries to create a domestic scene to which his wife might return and find satisfaction. Its destruction by the garbage men symbolically implies that the family’s days of contentment and conformity within the Mennonite community are over.
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Community and Coming of Age Theme Icon
Lately Nomi has been experimenting with vegetarian meals, but she’s not a very good cook, so they don’t always work out well. When Ray looks skeptically at tonight’s dinner of vegetables and pear nectar, she responds defensively that she can’t cook meat. Ray says this is “A-OK,” which drives Nomi crazy; she knows he’s just using slang in order to sound laid-back for her. She wonders if Ray might have preferred to have a son.
By taking over Trudie’s habitual tasks, Nomi is trying to postpone reckoning with her mother’s disappearance, in the same way that Ray will ignore household tasks in order to avoid facing his own grief. It’s clear that this evasiveness threatens not only their daily routines, but their mental stability.
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Today Nomi has visited the hospital to see her friend Lids, who has a mysterious chronic illness. Lids asks about the outside world and Nomi tells her about the weather and her part-time job at the carwash, which she sees as preparation for the “rigid schedule of killing” at the slaughterhouse. Lydia also asks if Nomi and Travis have “done it yet.” Lydia is such a devout Mennonite that she once dressed up as “a brown paper package tied up with string, from The Sound of Music” for a Halloween party, while all the other girls “dressed up like […] hooker[s].” But she never judges Nomi; she always asks thoughtful questions about her life and listens to the answers.
Lids and Nomi have vastly different outlooks on life, but they both understand and respect each other. Nomi provides the news of the outside world that Lids craves, while Lids listens to Nomi’s relationship troubles as no one else does. Interestingly, Lids’s serene faith allows her to accept the different attitudes of others, whereas the dogmatic religious beliefs of many other people in the town cause them to develop harsh and intolerant attitudes.
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Nomi offers to come her hair or moisturize her face, but Lids said it would hurt too much. A mean nurse comes in and says disapprovingly that Lids should be outside playing, clearly believing she’s not really sick. Nomi fantasizes about killing the nurse. On her way out, Lids gives her a poem she’s written about two girls playing.
Contrasting with the nurse’s inattentiveness, Nomi’s ability and willingness to provide physical care shows that she possesses a sense of compassion that many people in her community lack.
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