Miriam Toews

A Complicated Kindness, written by Miriam Toews is about a sixteen year old girl who lives in a Mennonite community and is eventually kicked out of the society by the end of the book due to her rebellious attitude. A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews is a novel that should be integrated in the grade eleven English curriculum due to the strong connections with the adolescent struggle to find one’s self. Toews’ credibility as an author and relevance for a teenage audience is clear through her overcoming…

In the Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness, the irony is used throughout the book to get deeper meanings across. Toews’s even uses dark and adolescent humor to not only to show the gap between reality and the ideal but also to bridge that gap. An example of this ironically laced humor would be Nomi explaining what there is to do in East Village ‘”Golf was another one because it consisted of using a rod to hit something much, much smaller than yourself and a lot of men in this town enjoyed that…

government and made life hard for the groups of people they did not support. This movement controlled whether blacks could move from one city to another and also which jobs they could get. Basically the goal and end result was that the Afrikaner party wanted total control of the lives of non-white South Africans (Okhamafe, 19). The non-white groups of people that attempted to fight back against the movement were either put in prison or tortured. Throughout the maltreatment that they endured,…

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones and A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews are both novels focused on young girls going though traumatic situations. Matilda from Mister Pip is a young girl living on an island plaugued by a civil war. Matilda is a smart young woman whose imagination was stunted due to the conflict that surrounded her. These conflicts began a short list of trauma-induced mental illnesses which stunted her mental growth and changed her identity. Nomi from Miriam Toews book A Complicated…

reading. First, Naomi behaves rudely to Mr. Quiring, she tries to express that she is disappointing on his regular basis (Toews 46). For example, when Naomi’s mom and sister left their town, Mr Quiring “was praying for them”, but Naomi…

In the novel A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, a teenage girl named Nomi Nickel has just lost her sister and mother to an unforgiving and judgmental town. Her father Ray is a high believer in the town’s religion and way of life. This oppression stunts human potential, but with faith and love can grow and fulfill your potential. Nomi has believed in the town’s way of life until her sister and mother leave Nomi and father. Nomi starts to question her beliefs and her place in the town. In…

on the use of literary devices in“A Complicated Kindness” by Mariam Toews In the novel “A Complicated Kindness” by Miriam Toews lies a story of misery and grief. In a small town in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the main character Nomi Nickel, is an excitable teenage girl living in the highly-religious Mennonite community of East Village. The town, so strict on its beliefs and limited in employment, offers little opportunity for a productive and happy future. Nomi though, in all her youthful…

On this journey, an individual witnesses himself climb through cultural barriers while strengthening his/her religious believes along with building a strong outlook on life. Through Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Miriam Toew’s A Complicated Kindness, it is evident that although both protagonists from the text are affected by from these influences over time in different ways throughout their journey of life, they eventually go through the process of self-growth leading to the realization…

My summative novel, A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews was a little bit of an odd one. Throughout this dark, yet uplifting novel, we follow the life of the main character Naomi Nickel, who is shortly nick-named Nomi. Nomi is a sixteen year old girl living in strict mennonite town that she does not belong in. She tries to deal with a father who doesn’t necessarily care about her, a best friend who is stuck with an unknown illness in a hospital, and a completely useless boyfriend. But most…

The Mennonite community of East Village has separated themselves from the outside world to keep their traditions and beliefs strict for its members and keep outsiders from interfering. Miriam Toews presents Nomi Nickel as the narrator to view the community of East Village from the perspective of an insider who recognizes issues and examines them. Toews’s writing, specifically from Nomi’s point of view, allows the audience to examine the culture from the insider’s standpoint. Their views and…