Split Tooth

The narrator’s babies, along with Helen, are the only named characters in the entire story. Giving these characters names makes them particularly vivid and helps make them feel more concrete despite their often symbolic function. The babies’ names reflect the narrator’s return to Inuit culture and her rejection of colonialism.

Fathered by the Northern Lights, Naja and Savik are not like other babies. They can shapeshift and have advanced intelligence. They are the same soul in two bodies and have lived many lives together. Nevertheless, Naja and Savik are starkly different. Naja is small and soft, and she heals those around her; she represents compassion and healing. Savik is bigger and fiercely protective of Naja; he represents pain and the perpetuation of trauma. He feeds off the pain and suffering of people around him, drawing their trauma to the surface to make himself stronger. The narrator feels anguish when Savik begins to make her family members sicken and die, but she knows that he cannot help his nature. The narrator acknowledges that her children inherited their nature from her. They embody her own feelings of love and rage, representing her inner struggle to balance healing and violence. This is why the narrator wishes they were one person again; the twins’ reunification would imply that she has found a way to reconcile these two competing drives. The twins’ symbolism also reveals the way in which trauma has affected the narrator’s community. The narrator suggests that other community members know the twins are unusual but are afraid to acknowledge them, suggesting that they are afraid to acknowledge their own pain and compassion, which stops them from healing.

Despite their differences, the twins love each other deeply. Naja is unable to deal with the pain of the world, but “Savik filters pain for her” (168), feeding on it rather than letting his sister feel it. Savik shows no such compassion for other community members, feeding on their pain and making them sick. His mother’s attempt to kill him is an attempt to kill the pain she and her community feel. However, through Savik’s escape and transformation, Tagaq suggests that pain cannot be killed; it can only be acknowledged. Naja, compassionate to the end, dies of shock when Savik hits the water. Here, Tagaq suggests that healing requires acknowledging pain. When the infants merge together and transform into a seal pup, Tagaq suggests that pain and compassion are one, dependent on one another.

Best Boy is the narrator’s crush. They go to the same school and begin spending time together as older teens. After the Northern Lights impregnate the narrator, she becomes aware that Best Boy is trying to seduce her but decides she only wants his friendship. When it becomes evident that the narrator is pregnant, people around town suspect that Best Boy is the father. Despite knowing he is not their father, Best Boy remains close to the narrator, filling the role of companion in her life. He adores her babies and spends a lot of time with them. The narrator decides to kill Savik partly to protect Best Boy. After the narrator makes her decision, Best Boy fades out of the story. 

Helen, Best Boy’s grandmother, first appears more than halfway through the story but plays a vital role in the narrator’s journey. She is a wise old woman who helps the narrator connect more to her heritage and culture during her pregnancy. Helen speaks Inuktitut with the narrator, improving her fluency for the first time. This connection to her past also helps the narrator connect with her babies in the womb; she can feel their happiness when she speaks Inuktitut. Despite Helen’s connection to important cultural knowledge, the narrator does not tell her the truth about Savik and Naja when they are born, and the Northern Lights erase Helen’s memory of the supernatural birth, suggesting that she is not prepared to accept the truth of their spiritual origin. She believes that Best Boy is their father and accepts them all into her family, providing shelter and protection when the narrator leaves her parents’ home.

The narrator has a large family. She does not clarify how many family members she has and at times mentions family members like her brother or grandmother, who are only present in dream sequences or references to the past. The narrator lives with her parents, whom she loves deeply. They are both stuck in their own cycles of trauma and substance abuse and are largely absent from the narrative other than their raucous parties. When the narrator gets pregnant, she worries she has lost her father’s love, while her mother is more prepared to love Savik and Naja. The narrator’s grandmother, who was Christian, in some ways reflects the legacy of colonization in the Arctic. The narrator’s grandmother tells her she will go to Hell and save millions of souls after death. The Christian belief system violently imposed on the Inuit informs her worldview and frames her message to her granddaughter. However, if she uses the language of Christianity, her message—that the narrator’s pain enables her to help others—is one the novel positions as central to the work of decolonization and recovery from trauma.

The narrator’s uncle is present throughout the book. Bleeding from a head wound, he finds the narrator hiding in the closet during the first party in the book, telling her not to be afraid. After her children are born, the narrator notices that Savik particularly dislikes her uncle because he carries a huge amount of guilt within him. Though she does not clarify what he is guilty about, the narrative implies he may be one of the men who sexually abused her.

The narrator’s younger cousin is another important member of her family. The narrator feels protective of her cousin and loves her deeply. The two have many adventures together, including swallowing live fish together at the lake. The narrator and her cousin are the only children able to see the evil spirit. Together, they leave their bodies and go to the spirit world, where they defeat the spirit. They are euphoric from harnessing fear.