A Complicated Kindness

“We’re Mennonites. As far as I know, we are the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager.”

Nomi’s faith is deeply conservative and repressive, and the teenagers in the town tend to either be ardent believers or act out through drug and alcohol abuse. Nomi grew up the former, but after the disappearance of her mother and sister, she has lost her faith. She feels that her conservative upbringing has left her unprepared for the wider world and very, very uncool.

“Why was Tash so intent on derailing our chances and sabotaging our plans to be together for goddamn ever and why the hell couldn’t my parents see what was happening and rein that girl in? We were supposed to stay together, it was clear to me. That was the function, the ultimate purpose, the entire premise for the existence of the Nickel family.”

As a younger teen, Nomi’s faith was unwavering, and she saw Tash’s move toward atheism as a betrayal. Now that she is headed toward that philosophy, she is left puzzling over why she was so angry with her sister and whether she has any blame for her leaving.

“I was amazed that [the dresses] were flying so close together and I thought it was great because they were dancing all over the place, seriously shaking it in this crazy, free, beautiful way until finally one of them fell onto the roof of my grandma’s barn and the other one coasted in for a spectacularly gentle landing right at my feet. It was one of the best things that had ever happened to me, watching those dresses dancing wildly in the wind.”

The dresses in this passage represent Nomi’s desire for vibrancy and meaning in her life and a rejection of the conservative Mennonite culture that typically forbids dancing. When she later goes looking for the dress that landed on the barn, it is an attempt to get back to that feeling of possibility.

“I dug the shunning story. I couldn’t wait to hear it. What a gem. IT completely reinforced my belief system of right and wrong.”

Nomi initially thinks excommunication is a proper form of discipline in the Mennonite community, as it aligns with her rigid views on morality. What is revealed over the course of the novel is that she also feels ashamed of that morality and its role in hurting her family. Her early obsession with shunning foreshadows her mother’s and her own excommunication.

“The Mouth of Darkness loves the word groovy and the expression simply put. Simply put, we are not a groovy people. He’s in love with the notion of shame and he traffics the shit like a schoolground pusher, spreading it around but never personally using. He’s not a fire-and-brimstone guy. That’s not really our speed. Too animated. Too much like dancing.”

The Mouth of Darkness is a force in the community, and what he says goes. What Nomi sees in her uncle is someone who lives in denial of his own sadness and guilt, causing him to wield his authority with severity and disproportion. Nome’s mother blames The Mouth for the wedge that forms in their family, particularly Nomi’s belief that Trudie is going to hell.

“Travis is teaching me how to drive. He likes teaching me things.”

Nomi has a wry, understated sarcasm toward Travis; she sees that the power dynamic of their relationship is ridiculous and that he treats her as though she’s incapable or stupid, yet she is attracted to him and is willing to change to earn his affection. Their relationship mirrors her relationship to the Mennonite faith: she knows it’s not a good fit for her, but she wishes it were.

“The Mouth’s wife never spoke. She was in charge of the Brides of Christ so maybe she spoke then but what do you say to the Brides of Christ?”

One aspect of the Mennonite faith criticized by Nomi (and as one of the novel’s overall themes) is that its repression disproportionately affects women. Trudie was unable to fit in because of this, nor was Tash, and as Nomi grew up without them she began to see evidence of it everywhere. 

“I could imagine my dad standing forever with his finger in a dike saving a town that only mocked him in return. And not knowing it. Or knowing it but not caring. Or knowing it but not knowing what else to do.”

Ray is a tragic figure throughout the novel, and only Nomi seems to have any respect for him aside from his young students. He is a true believer in the Mennonite faith, and his reserved nature and total shutdown after the departure of Tash and Trudie make him a pariah in town.

“We’d sit in the car and wait for my dad because he always went down the aisle to shake hands, the way you were supposed to, and it took a very long time. Often, our car would be the last one to leave the parking lot.”

One of the mysteries Nomi tries to untangle is the nature of Ray and Trudie’s attraction to each other. She is a lively free spirit, and he is a rule-following, dour man. This scene and others illustrate the central difference between them.

“I laughed, and then I realized that I had just laughed the type of laugh my mother often laughed. It was the kind of laugh a person laughs before consuming two or three bottles of Aspirin. And I had another thought: that Tash stopped laughing for a good reason. And that she was the sanest person in our family. But that didn’t make any sense at all.”

Nomi is laughing at her father’s discussion of an isotope’s half-life as she sees why the metaphor of molecules breaking down is attractive to Ray but can’t help but feel that there’s something meaningless about Ray’s enthusiasm. They are both deeply depressed, and Nomi is beginning to see the harm their life as Mennonites had on her sister and mother.

“The Mouth came over to our house one evening to tell my sister that her physical self was irrelevant. She said okay, thanks for that. Thank you for coming over here to tell me that. And when he left, she shouted oh my god and got on the phone immediately to tell her friends about the latest Buddhist-tinged interpretation of the gospel according to The Mouth.”

Tash’s teenage embarrassment over her faith and her uncle’s exhortation indicate Tash’s steady move toward atheism. What isn’t spoken here is the deep pain she feels at not fitting in with her family and her community and at seeing The Mouth’s beliefs as hypocrisy.

“Basically, I think that Trudie and Tash were kind of the same person. And maybe me and Ray are too. What was it Mr. Quiring told the guidance counsellor? Nomi’s problem is a general lack of self-esteem that feeds into an eroding sense of purpose. Yeah, okay, sounds right, I guess.”

As the two who were left behind, Nomi and Ray have fallen into a pattern of self-pity and inaction, so it’s no surprise that she would think of herself as having more in common with him than with Trudie. However, it’s the parts of herself that are more like Trudie that drive her toward the conclusion of the novel, and she comes to understand Ray as a man who is sacrificing to take care of the daughter he has left.

“When you’re a Mennonite you can’t even yearn properly for the world because the world turns that yearning into comedy. It’s a funny premise for a movie, that’s all.”

Nomi longs to move to New York and hang out in Lou Reed’s neighborhood, but she also knows how ill-equipped she is to do so. She sees the Mennonite identity as essentially comical, a tourist attraction, and she wishes that she came from a place that had more of a connection to the real world.

“Tash said: I think I’ll go crazy. I can’t stand it. It’s all a fucking lie. It’s not right and it’s killing me. It’s killing me! Mom, it really is! And then something happened that took me completely by surprise. I heard my mom say, I know, honey, I know it is.”

This moment is a shock to Nomi, who thought that her mother was a person of faith until to this point. To see that she empathizes with Tash’s growing atheism puts Nomi’s worldview at risk.

“The dump was like a department store for Ray, but even more like a holy cemetery where he could organize abandoned dreams and wrecked things into families, in a way, that stayed together.”

The dump is a symbolic space for Ray, and it represents his own life: sorting through what’s left to make something that makes sense. He finds comfort in the act because it helps him feel as though he has some control over his present situation.

“Ask [Nomi] to forgive you, Trudie said. You’ve scared the shit out of her, Hans. Tell her you’re sorry. Tell her! Tell her it’s not true. Tell her they are stories. You know nothing about love, nothing. You know nothing about anything at all and I hate you so much.”

Trudie’s exhortation to her brother is the breaking point of their relationship, though the consequences don’t come until later. Before this point, he was willing to work to find a place for her, but this moment paves the way for her excommunication.

“Nomi, she said. May I make a suggestion? I said of course she could. May I suggest you start with Matthew? she asked.

That’s probably a good idea, I said. Thank you. She seemed so happy then. I felt good about sticking around and talking to her. I wanted what she had. I wanted to know what it really felt like to think you were saving someone’s life.”

One element of the tragedy in Nomi’s life is that she wishes she could still have her faith, but her experiences have pushed her out of that space. Though the Mennonite belief system has caused her great pain, she still sees that there is kindness in the individuals who believe it, and the overall message of the faith is one that’s worth believing in, even though she can’t.

“They threw my mother out. Gave her the old heave-ho. The term is excommunicated. She was excommunicated, said my dad.”

Trudie’s excommunication is a deeply painful schism in the family. This moment shows how Nomi and Ray deal with it. Nomi tries to use humor as a defense, while Ray returns to the dogma of his faith, even though it is the ultimate cause of the pain he’s feeling.

“Mr. Quiring said that ideologies were to blame for most of the world’s problems, not individuals. What could The Mouth do but throw his sister out?”

Once again, Mr. Quiring’s words foreshadow his guilt in Trudie’s excommunication. He has rationalized his behavior as one piece of a larger system rather than as one man blackmailing a woman at the end of an affair.

“She didn’t take you with her because you were sleeping when she left.”

Ray’s response to Nomi’s question is both literal and figurative: Trudie left in the middle of the night, but Nomi was also still a devout Mennonite at the time. Trudie’s excommunication meant that she couldn’t stay with Ray, who would not be able to choose between the love of his life who had hurt him and the faith that was abandoning her. It’s telling that Ray thinks of Nomi’s present state of disbelief in the church as being awake despite his own continuing belief.

“I want to be nine again and be told, Nomi: someday you’ll be gone, you’ll be dust, and then even less than dust. Nothing. There’s no other place to be. This world is good enough for you because it has to be. Go ahead and love it. (Menno was wrong.)”

Nomi begins to think about how the Mennonite church has left her unprepared for life, and this quote describes what she wished she could believe outright. Instead, she is forced to live with the cognitive dissonance of wanting to belong to her community and knowing that she doesn’t.

“In a way I think it might have gone better if I hadn’t been bald, drunk, depressed and jealous. And if, when Travis whisper in my ear move with me, I hadn’t said: To Montreal? When he meant no, now, here, my body. And if afterwards he hadn’t given me an old mini-golf scorecard to wipe the blood off my legs and I hadn’t started crying in the truck on the way home and slammed it into reverse for no good reason going fifty miles per hour.”

Like many people, Nomi’s experience losing her virginity is an overwhelming, not-particularly-pleasant experience. In her case, it’s influenced by the depressive episode she’s going through and the feeling that she’s been pushed into sex by Travis; his pressure to get on birth control is a driving factor in her decision.

“Before, I said, you said there was a flip side to not looking forward to tomorrow.

Oh, [Ray] said. Faith.”

Ray tries to leave Nomi with the tools she needs before his departure, and one of those is hope. He sees her situation clearly, but he doesn’t want her to give up on herself, and he encourages her to think about her circumstances in a different light.