Point of View

The Mighty Red is written from the third-person point of view. Throughout the novel, this third-person narrator assumes both an omniscient and a limited stance. This means that in some passages, the narrator will describe events from a removed, unbiased perspective and offer access to scenes and temporal eras that not all of the characters know about. In “The Honeymoon,” “Bone Black,” for example, the narrator shifts into the past and describes events surrounding the slaughter of “the buffalo . . . by hunters, slaughter by traders, slaughter by tourists, slaughter by train, slaughter by the Winchester Repeating Rifle” (197). In this passage, the narrator is offering background details concerning “the Red River sometime in the 1830s,” as well as “in Philadelphia, sugar town, 1882” (197). These details give the reader insight into the region where the characters live. Therefore, the narrator is assuming an omniscient stance and offering information beyond...