At the Back of the North Wind focuses on Diamond, who comes from a lower-class family in the Victorian era. His father works while his mother keeps house, and Diamond does not attend organized school. He instead assists around the house, especially after his mother has other children, and helps his father drive a cab. By the middle of the novel, Diamond learns to read and uses this knowledge to read nursery rhymes and fairy tales. The two most classically educated characters in the novel are Mr. Raymond, who is an author of children’s poems and stories, and the unnamed narrator, who serves as a tutor.

Because most characters lack traditional schooling, the novel emphasizes wisdom that does not stem from conventional sources such as teachers and books. Diamond is one such source of wisdom. The narrator notes, “The whole ways and look of the child, so full of quiet wisdom, yet so ready to accept the judgment of others in his own dispraise, took hold of my heart, and I felt myself wonderfully drawn towards him” (200). Diamond is full of observations and adages that he sometimes shares and sometimes keeps to himself.