The characters move in isolation whereas the characters in NBK move with an entourage. In the nineties, human rage is a condition of shrinking space, the paranoiac reflex of passengers and prisoners. In the fifties, it's still personal, one man against another. You know why Kit starts killing. 25 and Holly's old man won't let him take her away.
Kit goes on to kill six or seven more people.
When Kit kills, it's a reaction, not an execution. Kit loses his job, is frustrated in his romance, recognizes that when Holly's father shoots her dog he's really shooting him. Holly and her father return, surprise Kit, and an altercation ensues. It's not so much feminist propaganda as it's a crude POV for the auteur , Terence Malik. Kit torches the Knox house and they flee into the country, hideout in a remote cottonwood grove beside a river.