63 pages • 2-hour read
Never Flinch
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, graphic violence, child abuse, mental illness, pregnancy termination, child death, and gender discrimination.
The Corrosive Nature of Guilt
The novel centers on the confrontation between three people who all see themselves as activists in different forms. At different times, each wields guilt as a weapon against perceived enemies, and the novel portrays guilt as a corrosive form of manipulation—one whose harmful effects extend far beyond its intended targets.
As a member of the jury in the Duffrey trial, Trig sees himself, his fellow jurors, the judge, and ADA Allen as equally guilty in Duffrey’s eventual murder in prison. For Trig, this is a moral issue reflecting the Blackstone Ratio, in which Duffrey is the “one innocent” who should not have been punished in an ideal system. Trig’s plan to make jurors feel guilty is one that relies on morality, assuming that everyone involved in Duffrey’s trial will understand their own moral responsibility. However, Trig’s methodology involves immoral actions, specifically killing random, innocent people to achieve his moral aim, making the jurors feel guilty. Antagonists Chris/Chrissy and Trig serve as foils for Kate: While Kate’s activism is non-violent and serves the just cause of equal rights for all people regardless of gender, Trig and Chris/Chrissy pursue their ideas of justice through violence against innocent people. All these figures use guilt as a weapon at times, but only for the antagonists does it become all-consuming—a double-edged sword that wounds both themselves and those they see as their enemies.
The visibility of Trig’s crimes is crucial to his plan, even as he loses touch with reality, but it is contrasted with his internal struggle, which is about expiating the guilt his father instilled in him in childhood. As he lights the kindling in the rink, he says: “They’re going to see this […] Everyone at their stupid game. See it, see it, see it” (379), and Trig’s repetition of “see it” highlights how he needs acknowledgment in order to achieve his purpose. He wants everyone to see his crime and feel guilty, since he assumes everyone will understand the connection between his murders and Duffrey’s death. However, Trig then kicks Chris/Chrissy’s dead body, thinking: “The son of bitch actually tried to stop him! To shoot him!” (379). Trig’s indignation implies that his mission is more focused on his own desire to do something drastic, making his justifications simply an excuse to do something that subverts his father’s perception of him as a “flincher” or “loser.” Trig’s guilt over Duffrey mixes with his shame from the abuse he suffered as a child, corrupting his sense of morality into a mere justification of his own immoral behaviors. Anything Trig does out of guilt he reframes to instead become a moral action committed to make someone else feel bad.
Trig’s violence is the main thing that separates him from Kate, who also uses morality and guilt to further her own goals. For example, Kate wants the picture of Corrie after the bleach attack to drum up support for her cause by making her opposition feel guilty for supporting Chris/Chrissy brand of counter-protesting. Chris/Chrissy is a more direct analog to Trig, since they choose to use moral justifications for their immoral plan. Critically, when Kate sees Real Christ Holy’s anti-abortion posters, she cries, telling Holly: “No one wants to kill babies […] No one in their right mind, anyway” (332-33). Kate’s opposition to violence is unconditional, unlike Trig and Chris/Chrissy who find justifications for their violence, and she actively sets aside her own aims in this moment to reassure herself and Holly that violence is never her goal. Kate’s non-violence and genuine belief in social justice separates her from the two antagonists. The misguided moral purism of the novel’s antagonists brings about nothing but suffering and death, while Kate’s self-regarding celebrity activism—for all its faults—inspires many people and brings about genuine, positive change.
The Challenges of Maintaining Authenticity in Activism
The novel’s exploration of activism is centered on Kate, an influential feminist writer who campaigns for reproductive rights. Though Kate inspires many people who read her books and attend her lectures, those who get to know her on a personal level discover a different side of her personality, as she subordinates everything and everyone in her life to the maintenance of her public image as a champion of women’s and reproductive rights. Through Kate, the novel explores the challenges of maintaining authenticity in activism, as the persona that makes Kate effective as an activist threatens to cut her off from authentic relationships.
Early in the novel, Kate is shown as domineering and excessively focused on appearances, most exemplified in her insistence that Corrie take a picture immediately after being attacked with bleach. This insistence shakes Corrie’s faith in her idol: Corrie realizes that Kate cares more about how she and her entourage are perceived than about Corrie as a person. Every decision Kate makes is motivated by the needs of her public persona. Even Kate’s decision to hire Holly as her bodyguard is informed by her rationale that hiring a woman will “look better” than hiring another man. Since Kate’s effectiveness as an activist depends in large part on her personal celebrity, Corrie struggles to distinguish between the choices Kate makes in service of the cause and those she makes simply to burnish her own fame.
When Corrie starts working with Kate, she idolizes her, but she slowly learns that Kate is not necessarily a good person, even if she does good work. When Corrie expresses reservations about continuing to tour in the face of successive attacks, Kate tells Corrie, “When we started out, I thought you wouldn’t say boo to a goose” (108), to which Corrie thinks, “That’s one of the reasons you picked me. Isn’t it?” (108), noting how Kate uses Corrie and others to achieve her aims. Kate’s persona is so all-consuming that everyone around her must be largely invisible: Corrie thought she would be joining arms and working together with Kate, but she gradually realizes that Kate does not want partners; she wants subordinates. Holly has the same reaction in different terms, realizing that Kate “needs” to be the “boss,” with Holly as a mere “employee.” Kate’s treatment of her employees is the same as her treatment of her followers and opposition, since she maintains a constant persona of superiority, even at the risk of becoming cruel. Though she tries to rationalize after the fact that the crowd was laughing “with” Chris during the abortion call-and-response, the fact remains that Kate gathered the crowd to laugh at Chris for his mistake, showing how quickly Kate is willing to capitalize on opportunities to make herself look better at the expense of others.
Despite these faults, even Corrie admits that she loves Kate for her work, telling Holly: “She always gets me […] She means it. Every word. Top to heels. She means it” (165). Though she creates an artificial persona in service of her cause, Kate’s belief in the cause is genuine. Regardless of Kate’s personality, her work is undeniable. Like any good activist, Kate pursues truth and justice without hesitation, and she knows that she cannot falter in her pursuit without her critics devouring her alive. In the end: “More states, two of them deep red, have enacted laws that safeguard a woman’s right to abort” (398), driven largely by a photo of Kate, not Corrie, after the attack at Holman Rink. The conclusion of the novel lends credit to Kate’s behavior, as she takes advantage of her own suffering as quickly as she took advantage of Corrie’s, implying a selflessness that Kate expects of others as well as herself. The results are Kate’s evidence that her brand of activism, regardless of her personality, is effective, but the implication of Kate’s success is that the price of victory is often personal, rather than physical.
The Power of Solidarity in Overcoming Challenges
Never Flinch highlights the importance of solidarity in the face of danger by contrasting the vulnerability that comes with isolation against the successes of teamwork and unity. When the main characters are targeted by violence and kidnapping, they are only vulnerable when they are alone. Corrie goes out alone and gets assaulted by Chrissy, only to later go to the Mingo alone and get kidnapped by Trig. When Kate tries to pursue Corrie alone, she ends up tied in Holman Rink next to her, just as Betty has a minor heart attack when she tries to save Barbara on her own. This pattern highlights the vulnerability of isolation, in which a threat is more likely to succeed when the target of that threat lacks support. Trig and Chris/Chrissy most embody this danger in their failures, just as the cast of characters displays solidarity in defeating Trig and Chris/Chrissy.
Trig and Chris/Chrissy’s deaths are notably anti-climactic in the end of the novel, and both die having just failed at their attempt to make what they saw as a meaningful difference in the world. When Chris/Chrissy tries to interrupt Trig’s kidnapping of Kate, Trig does not hesitate to kill Chrissy, snapping her neck before shooting her in the head. Prior to her death, Chrissy thinks, “[Trig] is also God’s servant, although he doesn’t know it” (338), imagining a solidarity that does not exist. Chris/Chrissy knows the potency of unity from their experience with Brenda’s Bitches, where the Real Christ Holy church subverted Brenda’s group’s counter-protest by spreading oil to make them crash, and they hope the same kind of solidarity is happening in Holman Rink. Potentially, if Trig and Chrissy worked together, they could have achieved their mutual goals, but they were both too wrapped up in their self-centered aims to reach any kind of understanding. Trig, then, having killed his only potential partner, meets the same kind of anticlimactic end when Holly and Jerome instantly shoot him to death.
Holly is often compared in the novel to Sherlock Holmes, another famous, fictional detective, but she differs from Holmes in one critical aspect: She accepts and encourages help from others. While Holmes often bounces ideas off Watson, he does not see Watson as his equal. Holly, instead, sees herself as a part of a team, relying on others to fill the gaps in her thinking and understanding. By the end of the novel, every character has contributed to Holly solving the cases of both the Surrogate Juror Murderer and Kate’s stalker, and many of her friends and colleagues help to physically remove Barbara, Corrie, and Kate from Holman Rink. Even after the conclusion of the fight against Trig, Holly meets with Izzy, Jerome keeps in touch with Corrie, and Barbara stays with Betty, highlighting how these lasting friendships can endure despite trauma.
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