Borders

The unnamed narrator is a Canadian Blackfoot boy. Despite his role as the narrator, he is the deuteragonist—the second most important character in the story behind his mother. His family consists of his mother and his older sister Laetitia, who is about 10 years older than he is. From his conversation with the news reporters, we understand that he lives with his cousins and extended family on a reservation and seems to enjoy his life. The narrator spends most of the story describing the actions and motivations of other characters, particularly his mother and sister. The narrator is a static character in the sense that he is largely the same at the end of the story as he was at the beginning.

His focus on his mother and sister prevents him from being as developed as the other main characters. He is also young, and his personality is still developing. He is “seven or eight” when his sister leaves the reservation and “twelve or thirteen” when they visit her (131). At such a young age in both storylines, he finds himself caught between childhood ignorance and the realities of adulthood. He is also at an age when he is beginning to form his sense of identity, which is shaped by other expressions of identity in the text.