Never Flinch

Kate McKay is a feminist author and lecturer traveling the country on a tour for her latest book. Her tour is about spreading information and visibility for the feminist cause, and she focuses heavily on the optics of the tour, similar to a political campaign. Kate’s character is split between her genuine concern for women’s rights, specifically reproductive rights in the novel, and her obsession with crafting a perfect vision of activism for public perception. Corrie, having joined Kate as her assistant out of admiration, gradually comes to understand that Kate’s life and motives are not solely selfless. For example, when Corrie gets attacked with bleach, Kate’s priority is getting a picture of Corrie while she is still disheveled and disoriented, even pulling Corrie onstage at a lecture to emphasize the trauma Corrie faced. While this decision shows a lack of understanding and concern, Kate justifies her behavior by referring to the importance of optics in activism. Essentially, Kate argues that seeing Corrie will show people the danger of activism, while simultaneously establishing Corrie, as well as Kate, as dedicated activists for enduring that danger.

Kate’s character embodies the tensions between genuine moral conviction and the public performance of those convictions. For example, when the Mingo bumps Kate’s tour date in favor of Sista Bessie, Kate pretends to have given the spot to Sista Bessie, taking credit for her apparent act of generosity to a Black artist. Kate does genuinely care about women’s rights, but as a celebrity activist, her advocacy for political causes is often difficult to distinguish from self-promotion. Her most emotional moment comes when she realizes how pro-life advocates think pro-choice advocates want to murder children. The idea of murdering children upsets Kate so much that she ends up modifying her arguments regarding reproductive rights to include advocating greater support for women who choose to maintain their pregnancies. This shift in Kate’s rhetoric indicates growth in her character and highlights her interest in promoting the ideologies and policies she thinks will truly serve people best.

Corrie Anderson is a graduate student who studied under Kate McKay for a two-week seminar, which led Kate to invite Corrie to work as her assistant on her lecture tour. In the beginning, Corrie is idealistic and humble, looking up to Kate and aspiring to attain Kate’s level of dedication. However, as the novel progresses, Corrie realizes the extent to which activism runs Kate’s life, as well as how fame and success have warped Kate’s personality. Kate is not the perfect, benevolent person she portrays herself to be, and Corrie struggles to come to terms with the reality of her idol. Initially, Corrie is uncomfortable with Kate’s demands, such as wanting Corrie to come onstage alongside a picture of Corrie immediately following the bleach attack. Corrie gradually grows accustomed to Kate’s behavior, though, including her constant need for reassurance. Corrie is effectively Kate’s personal hype person, consistently telling Kate that she is doing a good job. In addition to moral support, though, Corrie also manages all of Kate’s show dates, venues, lodging, and publicity, which Holly notes is incredibly stressful and impressive.

Corrie’s role in the novel is to counterbalance Kate’s intensity with a touch of realism and modesty. Holly even notes that Corrie reminds her of herself, and they share a strong tendency to doubt themselves. Corrie never confronts Kate about the difficulties of working under her, but it is important to note that Corrie leaves Kate at the end of the novel, returning home to New Hampshire following Trig’s attack in Holman Rink. Corrie keeps in touch with Jerome, who helps her cope with the trauma of being attacked with bleach, almost poisoned with anthrax, kidnapped, and narrowly rescued from a burning building. Corrie, more so than any other character in Never Flinch, faces constant and deadly threats. In reality, as Holly notes, Corrie serves as a surrogate for Kate, suffering attacks that are meant to hurt Kate, but which hurt Corrie instead.

Donald Gibson, also known as Trig or Trigger, is the program director of the Mingo Auditorium in Buckeye City. Trig grew up in Buckeye City, and his personal history is pieced together over the course of the novel. Trig grew up with a physically and emotionally abusive father. Trig’s only fond memories with his father were from 18-minute intermissions during hockey games in which the Buckeye Bullets were winning. Outside of these intermissions, Trig remembers his father as a cruel and critical man. The title of the novel, Never Flinch, is a reference to Trig’s father’s commands while forcing Trig to practice goaltending in hockey. When the puck would fly at Trig, his father would punish him for flinching. Trig’s mother tried to interfere with his father’s abuse until her death, but Trig later learns that his father killed his mother. Eventually, Trig’s father died of a heart attack, denying Trig the ability to confront him later in life. Trig attributes his struggles with addiction to both alcohol and murder to his father.

Trig’s backstory is critical to understanding his role in the novel, as he is the primary antagonist of the text. Trig’s role as a juror in Duffrey’s trial triggers an intense guilt when he discovers both that Duffrey is dead and that Cary Tolliver framed Duffrey. In response to this guilt, Trig concocts a plan to punish himself and the other jurors for Duffrey’s death by killing random, innocent people and blaming their deaths on the jury. Critically, Trig’s main motivation is punishing himself, as revealed in his initial letter to the police where he referred to the murders as an act of “atonement.” Trig is atoning for more than just the Duffrey trial, though, since he is also enacting a kind of revenge against his abusive father. In the end, Trig is no longer concerned with his moral grandstanding so much as he is obsessed with his hallucinated conversations with his father. In these conversations, he often takes on the role of himself as a child, implying that his childhood trauma has grown and manifested as a kind of psychosis during his murder spree. The end of the novel, in which Jerry Allison hears Trig’s voice coming from his ceramic horse, implies that Trig’s anger and trauma are so great that they may continue into the afterlife.