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Tash Nickel
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:
).
Chapter Twelve
Quotes
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.
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Chapter Eighteen
Quotes
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.
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Chapter Twenty-Four
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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.
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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:
).
Chapter Twelve
Quotes
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.
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Chapter Eighteen
Quotes
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.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Twenty-Four
Quotes
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.
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