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Chapter Two
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 has been dating her boyfriend, Travis, for five months. She met him at a New Year’s Eve party; the town’s more rebellious teenagers gathered on a hill to drink around a fire. Nomi shared a joint with Travis and they started talking about music, eventually discovierng that they share the same taste. Nomi reminded herself to be mysterious; since Tash and Trudie left, she’d been perfecting a “tragic and romantic” persona.
It’s clear that Nomi’s mother and sister are hardly the only rebels in the community—the fact that teenagers regularly gather to drink and smoke shows how religious principles clash with people’s actual culture and lifestyle. Throughout the novel, Nomi struggles to make sense of the contractions between the theoretical principles of her religion versus the factual reality of the community, and how this dissonance also manifests within herself.
Themes
At the gathering, Nomi and Travis began to talk casually. Nomi told him a story she made up, about a girl who really likes an older and cooler guy and happens to run into him on the street, only to find that she can’t talk to him when he’s actually there. Travis asked if Nomi prefers people she loves to be absent when she talks to them. Hearing the noise of the midnight countdown, Nomi and Travis returned to the fire. Another girl offered Nomi a hash pipe, but while she’s smoking, some roughhousing boys accidentally kicked her and the pipe cut the inside of her mouth. Not noticing, Travis leaned over to kiss her, but Nomi passed out. She woke up in the back of Travis’s pickup truck and began to fall in love with him.
It’s important that Nomi chooses to express her feelings for Travis through storytelling—for her, stories are markers of authenticity and truthfulness. This contrasts with the attitude of Mr. Quiring, who uses stories to reinforce abstract dogma. Nomi’s sudden injury—and her brusque manner of describing it—shows the downside of her rebellious attitude and resistance toward familial restrictions, which is that she frequently exposes herself to danger and mayhem for the sake of freedom.
Themes
Nomi remembers that, during church services, Trudie used to take care of the congregation’s babies in the “crying room.” Nomi and Tash often join her, and the three of them unplug the speaker broadcasting the weekly sermon and turn on the radio instead. Through the doorway they can see Ray, periodically falling asleep during the sermon; he’s “toeing the line” between his wife and his faith. Just a few weeks ago, Nomi heard her father respond to a everyday greeting from The Mouth by saying that he’s “living quietly with [his] disappointments.”
Even though the Mennonite community emphasizes the importance of nuclear families, Nomi’s strongest family memories often involve defying the church. This suggests that, even though she currently believes she must stay home in order to eventually reunite with her mother and sister, the only way the family can thrive is to escape the church’s domain.
Themes
