What is the narrator point of view in the novel, The Painted Drum?

Erdrich adopts different points of view for each section of her novel ("Revival Road," "North of Hoopdance," "The Little Girl Drum," and, again, "Revival Road"). In both "Revival Road" sections, the novel is narrated in the first person by Faye Travers. "North of Hoopdance" is narrated largely by Bernard, an Ojibwe man, but he is functioning not so much as a first-person narrator as in the capacity of a historian, or even a griot. "The Little Girl Drum," meanwhile, uses a more standard third-person limited approach, trading off chapters which follow the viewpoints of each of Ira and Shawnee before concluding with a long chapter that works as more of an ensemble piece.

Faye's narration is designed to allow Erdrich to explore the process of grieving. Though Faye is a careful and attentive observer of the events unfolding around her—the deaths of Davan and Kendra, the discovery of the drum, the grief of Krahe—she also fails to communicate to the reader the piece of information perhaps most foundational to her character: her feelings of loss and doubt after the death of her sister, Netta, when they were children. This style of narration allows Erdrich to advance a plot in such straightforward language as to make the reader trust Faye's narration, only for it to give way to the astonishing reveal of Faye's own grief, a rupture in the universe of the novel that leads to many of its most fascinating observations.

Bernard's narration in "North of Hoopdance," meanwhile, is designed to mimic the power—and the inconsistency—of oral tradition. Because the story has been passed down across generations and includes gaps in knowledge and understanding, it is necessary for the authenticity of it that Erdrich not present it in the third person as a kind of factual history. Bernard almost functions as a filter in this section to prevent the language from becoming too objective or certain. The haziness of certain aspects of the narrative lends it a quality of fable and folklore while also honoring the very real ways in which it affects the life of Bernard and his community. In a sense, the way that community understands the history is more important than the history itself, and Bernard's function as a middleman in the novel allows Erdrich to get this point across.

The objectivity of "The Little Girl Drum" allows Erdrich to lend equal power to the perspectives of parent and child, a function that is important to the narrative and thematic focus of the section, the relationship between Ira and Shawnee.