What do we learn about the narrator as a character through her narrative techniques in "Saint Marie" by Louise Erdrich?

In Louise Erdrich's collection, Love
Medicine, and specifically the chapter entitled, "Saint Marie," the narrative
technique most evident is the use of "voice," showing what Marie is and what she is not.
(Erdrich also uses flashback, another narrative
device.)

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Through use of realism and evocative visual
imagery, Erdrich captures the contemporary
audience.

Voice
is the way in which the character speaks to the audience. Marie
seems to be a reliable narrator: she is realistic to the point of
cynicism, holding up the irony in the world around
her.

...the
narrator is not the author but a created persona with a personality, a behavior pattern
and special reasons for telling the story in the manner it is being
told...

Marie is a
fourteen-year old who can spot hypocrisy a mile away. She wants to join a convent, but
is not concerned with piety—simply with making a break with her
Native American heritage and getting the nuns to idolize
her.

Marie
is upfront and honest about her situation and her world view. She describes herself as a
girl who would do just about anything to get out of the bush and into
town.

I had
the mail-order Catholic soul you get in a girl raised out in the bush, whose only
thought is getting into
town.

With Marie's literary
voice, she describes the truth of the human condition. Marie describes a "windbreak"
that has been constructed in front of the bar, within the sight of the convent.
Allegedly installed for "the purposes of tornado insurance," Marie is having none of it:
she knows it is there so people can drink without being observed by the
sisters.

Marie goes to the convent and she is taken in.
Marie says:

I
was that girl who thought the black hem of her garment would help me rise. Veils of love
which was only hate petrified by longing—that was
me.

Marie is taken under the
wing of Sister Leopolda, who believes that Satan is alive and well. (Most of the other
nuns have lost track of him.) As the story continues, Sister Leopolda becomes obsessed
with reaching Marie's soul and keeping it from Satan, who Sister says wants Marie's soul
badly. Her "lessons" come in the form of Sister's physical abuse. Ultimately Sister
burns her; soon after, Marie tries to push Sister into the oven; it is then that Sister
hits Marie and stabs her in the hand with a fork. Unconscious, Marie is taken in to the
couch in Mother Superior's office.

The reader is aware of
the irony of the situation when Marie learns that Sister Leopolda has explained the
wound to Marie's hand as a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stigmata">stigmata ("bodily
marks or pains resembling the wounds of the crucified Jesus and sometimes accompanying
religious ecstasy"). Marie is being worshipped by the other sisters! This was what Marie
wanted all along! Marie's cynicism is obviously warranted: Sister Leopolda has saved
herself by making Marie the center of a "trumped up" miracle. She
realizes, too, that she has Sister Leopolda exactly where she wants her—but then takes
pity on her, saying nothing. Here, too, is irony as the "devilish" Marie is the one to
take pity on the sinful Sister Leopolda who all along has been telling Marie how hard
the devil has worked for Marie's
soul.

In the end, the adult voice of Marie, once again
recognizes the difference between appearance and reality. She realizes she is no saint,
but simply dust. And this is no place for her. She leaves the convent, turning her back
on Christianity when she states "Rise up and walk! There is no limit to this
dust!"