Point of View

In Thunder Rolling in the Mountains, the point of view is straightforward and consistent: it is written in the first-person perspective, with the narrative told entirely through the eyes of Sound of Running Feet, who is the daughter of a chieftain of the Ne-mee-poo. Her voice is clear, direct, and simple: the vocabulary is not convoluted or advanced but rather reflects the young age of the narrator, who is fourteen, and who speaks without ‘formal education’ in the European sense but with the kind of education common to someone of her age and gender in Ne-mee-poo society. She is presented as a reliable narrator, with the reader having no reason to doubt her description of events and no other voice with which to compare accounts.

Sound of Running Feet narrates the events of the story in chronological order, beginning with her return journey from a...