Summary Of The Round House By Louise Erdrich

J. Coutts v. Conscience

British politician and writer, Benjamin Disraeli once said, "Justice is truth in action". But what conveys justice when the truth comes out, but no action is taken? What happens when you are the minority trying to fight back to the majority who controls the operation, what can you do then? In The Round House, by Louise Erdrich, Joe Coutts must take action in order to ensure the safety and sanity of his family but also ultimately live with the consequences of his decision. Consumed with the desire to attain justice, Joe becomes obsessed with finding his mother Geraldine's attacker who violently rapes her. He then battles to comprehend how he should react to receiving newfound knowledge regarding the attack. The Round

How can a person live bearing the blood of another on their hands? Joe must now live with the consequences of his actions without going insane. Right after Joe kills Linden, it seems as if the entire reservation is sent a notification. Immediately, everyone Joe goes to talk to discusses the topic as Joe still recovers from the shock. While his own father suspects him, the sister of the victim, on the other hand, Linda disregards Joe as the killer. His father asks him directly after he returns home after the kill, “Joe, do you know anything, even the slightest thing, about this… He was murdered”(292) while Linda says to him, “I have decided that you are too young to have accomplished this,”(298). The contrast in response to a boy who has just committed murder would have been a big deal. While a man who he loves unconditionally and has known Joe his whole life seems to suspect him, a woman who he may have spent a total of perhaps 10 hours with did not see him capable to do such a horrible deed. Nonetheless, Linda later says to Joe, “This’ll get to you. Or whoever, I mean. This will wreck you. Don’t let it wreak you, Joe. What could you do? Or whoever do?”(300). Struggling to not be wreaked seems to be the central question and hardship Joe would be dealing with, as he tries to move on with his life. But truly, what could he have done? Could he have waited for the federal police to finally come down to the reservation and gather enough

Throughout the story, the repeated reference to the story Mooshum, grandfather of Joe, told Joe in a dream about the wiindigoo is common. The wiindigoo is a mythological creature of the Oijibwe tribe that Joe comes from which is a monster that has the ability to infiltrate people’s minds and then lures humans out to kill them. In the book, Linden Lark represents the wiindigoo, getting into everyone’s head and bringing out the worst in everyone. Now, according to the folklore about the wiindigoo, “the only person who could kill a wiindigoo was someone in the blood family,”(180) and this kill would be considered one of justice and is excused from the law not as murder. The connection to Joe’s killing of Lark is that since Lark portrays the supposed wiindigoo and attacks Geraldine, then a blood relative of Geraldine could kill the wiindigoo without any bad karma happening to them. On the other hand, readers also must consider the reality and not base the case on a folklore. Can Joe’s action of killing Linden Lark be considered as one of justice or unjust, unreasonable thinking. Looking back at the story of the wiindigoo, Joe’s dad Bazil couldn’t have killed Lark because, “if [the] husband killed [him], people might take revenge,”(180). Then consider the law. Bazil tells Joe how he and the people at the courthouse, “want the right to prosecute criminals of all races on all lands within our original boundaries,”(230), meaning that the local