What is the narrator point of view in the novel, The River Between Us?

The story is told from two different narrative points of view. The first and final chapters, essentially the book's prologue and epilogue, are recounted in the first person subjective voice of narrator Howard Hutchings, an adult recalling an incident in his childhood and doing so from the point of view of a somewhat naïve, but undeniably open minded, young man discovering new truths about himself, his family, and his life. Howard portrays himself as excited about the possibilities of life, both in terms of what he is experiencing in the present and, as the final chapter makes clear, how experiences in the past have made his present day family who and what they are.

The chapters in between are recounted in the first person subjective voice of Tilly, who appears in the Howard Hutchings chapters as his elderly grandmother and who, like Howard, is an adult telling a story of what happened in childhood. For further consideration of the differences and similarities in the narrative voices and/or experiences of these two narrators, see "Language and Meaning" below. In terms of point of view, though, it's essential to note that both the younger Tilly and the younger Howard accept people, situations and circumstances as they are; in other words, they are both essentially free, or become essentially free, from prejudice. As such, they embody and manifest one of the narrative's central themes, and are representative of the work's thematic point of view, its essential contention that racism, and indeed prejudice of any sort, are negative to the point of being destructive, a situation that is also inherent in the next of the book's stylistic considerations, its setting.