Point of View

The point of view of Split Tooth is in the first person. The novel’s tense shifts throughout the novel from past to present tense, suggesting that the narrator is either a young girl narrating events which happen to her or an adult woman reflecting on her past. The narrator is an unnamed person, suggesting that she acts more as an archetype for an Inuit girl than an individual human.

Other characters in the novel are named based on the narrator’s relationship with them (for example, cute boy later becomes Best Boy as their relationship develops). These personalized names emphasize the internality and unreliability of the narration. For example, she only realizes after the fact that she has attempted suicide, which forces the reader to question earlier parts of her narration. When considering her encounters with the Northern Lights, the narrator notes that no...