One aspect of Miriam Toews' novel A Complicated Kindness that I strongly reacted to was the fact that all of Nomi's family deserted her and each other. In my own sheltered perspective, it's just hard for me to imagine how somebody (a parent especially) would think it was okay to abandon their family. For example, if Trudie wanted to escape that badly, why didn't the whole family pack up and leave? If the only answer to that is Ray wanted to remain a part of that particular Mennonite community, I don't think that's a good enough answer. Nomi talked a lot about her mom leaving because she didn't want to make Ray choose between her and his faith, but if I were Trudie I would have made Ray choose, or find a compromise somehow (like maybe moving, but to another Mennonite community). It just seems like there were a world of better ways for Nomi's family to conduct themselves.
Another thing I found hard to relate to regarding family members leaving is that nobody seemed to think it was important to stick together as a family. Admittedly, my family dynamic is much different from Nomi's, but I wouldn't be able to walk out like that on my family without missing them a lot. I'm able to enjoy my time here at college because I know I can see my family over break.
Finally, the biggest issue I have with this everybody-desert-Nomi thing is that Ray left Nomi to sell the house, find a job, and basically figure out her whole life all by herself. To me, this is inappropriate to the extreme. I always thought that as a parent, you'd want to make sure your child is adequately prepared to understand and survive in the real world by providing guidance or support when necessary. Nomi is all Ray has left, and vice versa, so it's hard for me to understand why he left.
Jake, I agree that this is indeed a very sad book in terms of Naomi being abandoned by her family. It's certainly not typical of Mennonite families I know, but there are always exceptions--those who live at the margins, whose families struggle with mental illness and dysfunction, etc. What I'm wondering if if this abandonment scheme serves a metaphorical purpose in the novel at large. What do you think about that?
ReplyDeleteI also thought this was unusual and unwarranted, but I also understand this abandonment as part of a larger narrative. I think Toews uses Nomi's eventual isolation as a metaphor for the loss of her mother tongue, as well as the ways in which Nomi reconciles and rejects binaries, or as the name of the book suggests, the ways she complicates binaries.
ReplyDeleteI also struggled with the extreme examples of abandonment in the novel, but I did understand the motives of each abandonment to a point. Coming from our Goshen College Mennonite viewpoint (super liberally-minded) it is hard for us to imagine people who would find it hard to choose between your wife and the church. Just go find another church! But i saw that through Ray's point of view, leaving the church was equivalent to leaving God. In the conservative standpoint, The Mouth and his rules were God's decrees. Leaving that church was like exile from God Himself. We also have to remember that, from Nomi's point of view anyway, Trudie left so that Ray wouldn't have to shun her, which is its own type of sacrifice for family, just differently than we'd expect.
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