45 pages • 1 hour read
Split Tooth
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Symbols & Motifs
The Fox
Content Warning: This section discusses sexual abuse and assault, anti-Indigenous racism, and colonialism.
The motif of the fox recurs several times in Split Tooth. The image of a fox’s head appears on the book’s front cover and final page. The novel frames foxes as inherently liminal and difficult to categorize. The narrator feels that “If a wolf and a lynx mated, perhaps their love child would be Fox, who seems to embody the uncanny agility and size of a cat coupled with the strength and durability of a canine” (69). The fox’s ambiguity is central to its place in the narrative, as it is both an ordinary animal and a resident of the spirit world. This tension of opposites grounds the relationship between the narrator and Fox (the archetypal fox that represents both individual animals and a spiritual presence). In the same way that she is attracted to the spiritual world, the narrator is drawn to foxes, often approaching and communicating with them though some of them may be rabid. At the same time, both she and her father kill them to protect them.
The relationship between the narrator and Fox is notable for its erotic component. The narrator describes the dream where she performs oral sex on Fox very differently from earlier descriptions of sexual abuse and assault. She chooses to free him from a curse, making this the first consensual sex of the novel. Her experience with Fox subverts the assaults she survived in the real world; in healing Fox, she also takes control of her sexuality and starts to heal herself, embodying the idea that recovery from trauma must be a collective effort, uniting the individual, the community, and the earth itself.
The Arctic
The Arctic setting of Split Tooth is an important motif. The narrator does not simply live in the Arctic; it is part of her. The environment around her, which can be extremely harsh and unforgiving, informs every aspect of her life. In most parts of the world, buildings on stilts over frozen ground, attending school in -50-degree weather, or spending months of the year in total darkness are completely alien experiences. For the narrator, they are not just normal but necessary parts of life. Though the cold can be both profoundly unpleasant and dangerous, the narrator’s biggest worry is the potential disruption of the Arctic’s natural cycles through resource extraction and climate change.
In Split Tooth, the Arctic is essentially a character. It keeps the people and animals that live there alive, and it also puts them in danger. It has its own needs and requires respect and care. The scenes featuring the Northern Lights exemplify this personification. The lights, only visible in far northern regions, provide the narrator with a link between Reality and the Spirit World and a literal connection to the Arctic environment she loves so much. By choosing to give birth in an igloo on the ice, the narrator places her trust in the Arctic to protect her and her children, just as precolonial Inuit communities did to survive.
Traditional Knowledge (Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit)
One of the book’s motifs is Inuit traditional knowledge, also called Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. This traditional knowledge can take many forms, from a clear understanding of the Arctic ecosystem, to social organization principles, to conflict resolution strategies. The narrator interacts with this knowledge in many ways along her journey. In the early sections of the book, she struggles to connect to her heritage: Innuinaktun lessons in school are difficult and boring. As her story develops and she gains a greater connection to the spirit world, the narrator also comes to better appreciate IQ. Through her connection with Helen and the spirit world, the narrator learns Inuktitut. At the end of the story, the ambiguous fate of the narrator’s soul can be interpreted as reflecting the ongoing cultural tensions between Christianity and Inuit belief systems in the Arctic, leaving Inuit peoples in a spiritual limbo that future generations will need to escape.
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