Characters 12

Is any of the characters a developing character? If so, is his change a large or small one? Is it a plausible change for him? Is it sufficiently motivated? 

All of the members of Nomi’s family are developing characters in the novel A Complicated Kindness. I would say that the main characters in the novel are Nomi, her father Ray, her boyfriend Travis and possibly her mother Trudie, it is untrue to say that all of the main characters are developing characters, as Travis does not develop, and Tash, Nomi’s sister is not significant enough to be a main character. The changes are plausible and all sufficiently motivated as everyone in the world changes and develop as they grow up, or at least, through adolescences or due to a life tragedy. Through reading this novel, the characters grow many years in age, you watch them learn and grow in general as people, making significant changes by learning significant things along the way. There is a very wide time span over the course of the novel and this allows for lots of developing to occur. “I was eight, and Trudie was thirty-five” (p. 2). Nomi is an observer and a questioner, she watches people and over thinks about their quirks and mannerisms and end up finding out a lot about people. You watch her grow in knowledge and she is more full of knowing by the end of the novel; even though a bunch of sad things have happened to her, I think she understands in a way; a complicated kindness. She also always sees things in a different way than anyone else would, and a lot of people consider this weird and unnerving. “Main Street is as dead as ever. There’s a blinding white light at the water-tower end of it and Jesus standing in the centre of it in a pale blue robe with his arms out, palms up, like he’s saying how the hell would I know? I’m just a carpenter. He looks like George Harrison in his Eastern religion period working for Ringling Brothers. Whatever amateur made the sign put a red circle on each of his cheeks to make him look healthy, I guess, but healthily ridiculous.” (p.63) Her ability to see things differently helps you more notice the changes she makes along the way, as you can view what stumped her, why is stumped her, the reasoning through and the conclusion or lack of that she comes to in the end. There is one paragraph at the end of the novel, right before she leaves town forever and I think it better helps explain what I’ve been rambling about, but it may make no sense to someone who’s never read this book, as the changes she makes are only really apparent to someone who has followed her through her journey. “And after ten of fifteen minutes of spinning we both fell down on the wet grass and everything, the sky, the sun, the clouds, the branches overhead were swirling around and making me feel like throwing up so I closed my eyes and that’s when the odd thing happened. I started to see things in my town clearly, the pits, the fire on the water, Travis’s green hands playing his guitar, him whispering in my ear move with me, and the trampoline, and the old fairgrounds and the stuff written on the rodeo announcers’ booth and the lagoon and the cemetery, and the toboggan hut and the RK Ranch and the giant horses and my windowless school and my desk and American tourists and The Mouth and Main Street and the picnic table at Sunset Diner, and Sheridan Klippenstein and everything, everything in town, the whole of East Village, and it didn’t seem so awful to me any more in that instant that I knew I’d probably never see it again except for every time I closed my eyes. (p. 319) The developing of Trudie and Tash and Ray is less prominent than Nomi’s, but is still significant to the story, and adds to Nomi’s development, which I think was one of the author’s goals when writing this novel.