Days Without End

Content Warning: This section of the guide makes reference to violence, racism, anti-gay bias, anti-trans bias, and sexual violence.

Thomas McNulty is the narrator and protagonist of Days Without End. Thomas’s perspectives exist in dual timelines; he narrates the novel from memory, beginning with his experiences at approximately age 17, with the actions described growing closer to the “present” of the novel. At the end of the text, when Thomas is approximately 40 years old, the two timelines converge, and Thomas looks forward to a future spent with family. Over the course of the novel, Thomas engages in various forms of gender exploration, and finds himself increasingly preferring to wear women’s clothing, which he does whenever circumstances allow. By the end of the novel, she considers herself a woman.

Thomas’s assessment of his life is predominantly practical as pertains to the horrors he sees and participates in as a soldier in the American Indian Wars and the Civil War. Though he expresses mild doubt about the righteousness of the conflict between the American army and Native Americans, he does not hold himself personally accountable for the atrocities committed over these wars, even when they are committed by his own hand (but under orders).