Travis Character Analysis in A Complicated Kindness

Nomi’s boyfriend, a disaffected and rebellious Mennonite teenager. Like Nomi, Travis is intelligent, curious about life outside of their closed community, and given to disobeying the rules: together they cruise around the countryside at night, cobble together money for drugs, and share their first sexual experiences. Yet he’s also self-centered and shallow, concerned above all else with acting like a “cool” and artistic teenager. He often criticizes Nomi’s personality and behavior. Even though she’s going through a family crisis, when she makes herself vulnerable to him he ignores or derides her. In this sense, Travis is a foil to Nomi’s empathetic and outward-looking personality. Despite these character flaws, Nomi looks up to Travis and dreams of cementing their relationship by having sex and escaping town to Montreal. In fact, though, shortly after sleeping with him for the first time, she discovers that he’s been cheating on her. While Nomi feels immensely betrayed by his actions, she soon leaves home without Travis’s help. While she initially thought she needed her boyfriend to build a new life in the outside world, she eventually realizes that he was only holding her back.

Travis Quotes in A Complicated Kindness

The A Complicated Kindness quotes below are all either spoken by Travis or refer to Travis. 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:

Travis had suggested I broaden my horizons and attempt to finish my thoughts. He said I should make a list of ways to improve. Oh that’ll help, I thought.

Related Characters: Nomi Nickel (speaker), Travis

Page Number and Citation: 99

Explanation and Analysis:

One of Nomi’s central relationships in the novel is with her boyfriend, Travis. In some way, he’s a good companion: he keeps her company when she’s neglected by Ray and friendless at school, and he helps her experiment with abandoning Mennonite norms. At the same time, he can be shallow, pretentious, and controlling. His unwillingness to support Nomi during moments of emotional vulnerability contrasts with Nomi’s empathy for others, and his pseudo-intellectual pronouncements highlight Nomi’s own humble introspection. Despite the fact that Nomi is obviously a more mature and sympathetic character, she often feels dependent on and inferior to Travis. Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliqu

And even though tears in my throat were starting to suffocate me, in the nick of time I remembered Travis telling me once that I was boring when I was offended, and to be boring was the ultimate crime, and I put my head back and made a laughing sound.

Related Characters: Nomi Nickel (speaker), Travis

Page Number and Citation: 150

Explanation and Analysis:

After one of their habitual nighttime drives, Nomi and Travis are listening to a song about an old woman who wanders the streets of her town singing about her lost youth. Travis jokes that this might be Nomi in the future. That Nomi is so upset by this joke reveals the depths of her anxiety about the future, and her sense that if she doesn’t leave home, she will end up wasting her life. The fact that Travis makes the joke in the first place reveals how oblivious he is to her emotional state. It’s also important that Nomi knows Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae volu

We drove to the pits and rinsed the purple gas off in the water which made it beautiful and we floated around in gassy rainbows for hours talking about stuff and lighting the gas with Travis’s lighter so it was like we were in hell. Rainbow pools of fire in the pits, the smell of smoking stubble, the hot wind, dying chickens, the night, my childhood.

Related Characters: Nomi Nickel (speaker), Travis

Page Number and Citation: 200

Explanation and Analysis:

Nomi and Travis have been out all night making mischief: painting a barn and each’s other bodies, then covering each other in gas from a tank outside The Comb’s trailer and going swimming. The scene that Nomi describes isn’t beautiful or romantic in the traditional sense: after all, she’s swimming in a lake contaminated with oil, and this night foretells her looming breakup with Travis. However, Nomi’s blissful tone show her ability to appreciate the beauty of everyday life—a trait that sets her at odds with her ascetic community but ultimately helps her cultivate inner calm and contentment. Moments of Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo

Travis Character Timeline in A Complicated Kindness

The timeline below shows where the character Travis appears in A Complicated Kindness. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Nomi has been dating her boyfriend, Travis, for five months. She met him at a New Year’s Eve party; the town’s more... (full context)

At the gathering, Nomi and Travis began to talk casually. Nomi told him a story she made up, about a girl... (full context)

...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... (full context)

After supper, Nomi and Travis go for a drive and meet their friends at the pits, a drainage ditch and... (full context)

In the present day, Nomi has just returned home from a drive with Travis. Sometimes they race farm dogs or tape notes on cows; today they have found a... (full context)

Once, while walking back from Travis’s house at night, Nomi passes The Mouth’s house and watches him eat a pint of... (full context)

Travis, “who likes to teach [Nomi] things,” is showing her how to drive. At night, they... (full context)

Now, Nomi and Travis try to make amends by buying their booze in the French villages. Wealthier Mennonites go... (full context)

Travis and Nomi return to Travis’s basement to drink and listen to records. He shows her... (full context)

...her desk. Nomi puts on one of Tash’s records and lies in bed thinking about Travis and looking at her poster of Christina’s World. (full context)

Nomi and Travis are sitting in the truck waiting to meet The Comb, a local drug dealer, and... (full context)

Travis picks Nomi up on Main Street, and they go for a drive. Nomi wants him... (full context)

...the hill for a long time. In the dirt she practices the new signature that Travis helped her design. Once Nomi was called Naomi, but young Tash couldn’t pronounce her name,... (full context)

Travis tells Nomi that she should get on the Pill. Nomi thinks he’s probably right. Travis... (full context)

...in her sleep. She starts making a list of things to improve about herself, because Travis has suggested she “broaden [her] horizons and attempt to finish [her] thoughts.” She resolves to... (full context)

Travis tells Nomi that the novelist Günter Grass mocks Mennonites in his writing, because in Germany... (full context)

Nomi asks Travis to play his guitar so she can relax. She says that she’ll sketch him while... (full context)

...she falls. Normally she catches a ride with a farmer when this happens, but today Travis happens to drive by and picks her up. Travis says she should wear bike clips... (full context)

Travis pulls up to The Comb’s trailer and helps Nomi get dressed and pull carpet fluff... (full context)

Nomi and Travis see The Comb inside his trailer, but they don’t have any money to buy weed.... (full context)

Christian Salvation vs. Earthly Joy Theme Icon

On the way home, Travis tells Nomi that he once asked his mother whether she loved God or his father... (full context)

...out of typing class “for flippancy.” She’s distracted by thinking about her phone call with Travis before school. He’s acting cranky, and she tells him that he should just apologize for... (full context)

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... (full context)

...they like. Nomi tries to think about her problems by putting them in categories like “Travis,” “school,” and “environment.” She remembers jumping on the trampoline with Tash years ago. Tash instructed... (full context)

In the present day, Travis tells Nomi that he’s planning to move to Montreal. He says that she can come... (full context)

...while, she goes inside, puts on a record, and decides to razor her bangs, because Travis doesn’t like her hair that way. Then she puts on Tash’s sweatshirt and walks down... (full context)

...clear these are not “the best years” of Nomi’s life, and lets her leave early. Travis comes to pick her up, but she criticizes him for wearing a poncho and he... (full context)

After school, Travis picks Nomi up and they both apologize for their earlier behavior. Without telling Nomi where... (full context)

In the present day, Travis teaches Nomi how to walk properly; she has to “roll and bob more” and give... (full context)

...graduate high school. She goes to her bedroom and watches tourists passing through in RVs. Travis has a job now pretending to be a shepherd at the museum and erasing the... (full context)

...he loves to answer them. She walks to the museum and is annoyed to see Travis and Adeline happily sharing a joint. Nomi and Travis go for a walk, and she... (full context)

That night, Nomi helps Travis paint his goat barn red. They take off their clothes and paint each other’s bodies... (full context)

That night, Nomi and Travis sit in the park drinking until they accidentally smash their liquor bottle. They give each... (full context)

Nomi walks to the museum village and makes out with Travis in the barn until his fake wife from the museum comes to find him. Nomi... (full context)

That night, Travis picks Nomi up for a drive. They have sex, and Nomi says in retrospect that... (full context)

...Ray goes upstairs to watch Hymn Sing, and Nomi smokes a cigarette and reflects that Travis hasn’t called since she “botched yet another common human activity.” (full context)

Nomi calls Travis. His mother picks up and says that he and his father are doing a job... (full context)

Finally, Travis’s mother lets Nomi into his room. It’s empty, and Nomi takes a guitar pick and... (full context)

...going to the hospital, Nomi says, she drove to a local motel where she found Travis’s truck parked. She figured that he and Adeline must have found a sitter for their... (full context)

...she feels that she can see everything in her life clearly, from the pits to Travis’s hands playing the guitar to The Mouth and her “windowless school.” Now that she knows... (full context)

Travis Character Analysis

Travis Quotes in A Complicated Kindness

Chapter Twelve Quotes

Chapter Eighteen Quotes

Chapter Twenty-Four Quotes

Travis Character Timeline in A Complicated Kindness