Essay Questions

A Complicated Kindness is essentially a story in which every individual is struggling with their misfortunes. Illustrate this statement using illustrations from Miriam Toews novel of the same name.

In the novel, most of the characters are presented as having one misfortune or another. Toews paints her characters in a way that explicitly brings to light the various misfortunes and troubles that each are having in their lives. For instance, Ray, who is also Nomi’s father, is suffering from depression, a situation that leads him to sell all the furniture in the house.

On the other hand, Nomi is depicted as an individual who is at the receiving end of Travis’ bad behaviour. Travis maltreats Nomi in all manner of ways. Despite failing to treat her well, Travis pressures Nomi into having sex with him, a situation that Nomi gives into after getting birth control. On top of that, Travis cheats on her. Similarly, Trudie and Tash, Nomi’s mother and sister respectively are presented as being rebellious and anarchistic. Indeed, A Complicated Kindness, can thus be argued as a story in which every individual has problems and misfortunes of their own.

Explore how shame and religion are brought out in this novel.

Religion plays a major role in the shame that Nomi feels in this novel. As a result of an acutely strict and stringent culture imposed on the people in form of a religion, Nomi is left with a distorted idea and is thus ashamed of doing what she wants with her life because she has been raised to believe that God will detest her if she does so.

The character Ray is an epitome of depression and mental issues in A Complicated Kindness. Illustrate the truthfulness of this statement based on this novel.

Toews presents Ray in the novel as a character who is suffering from depression. In the novel, Ray is unable to take hold of his life as such; he loses control of his mental stability. Even though earlier on in the novel the character is presented as a rather loving and supportive, Toews presents his despair as well as his loneliness through the eyes of Nomi’s who observes that Ray always spend much of his time, “sitting in his yellow lawn chair by the front door staring off at the number twelve highway.” Later in the novel, Ray loses it, sells the house furniture and even commits suicide. It can thus be contended that the novel is Miriam Toews’s attempt at reunifying a household alienated by despair and depression.