Erdrich takes the reader along as Joe is forced into adulthood by needing to become self-reliant as both his parents lock themselves away: his mother emotionally shutting down and locking herself in her bedroom and his father, the tribal judge, pouring himself into his court cases and law books in an attempt to make sense of the heinous crime. Joe gets his wish as his life is forever changed after a brutal attack on his mother. In The Round House Erdrich skillfully presents a bildungsroman, opening her novel with her newly thirteen year old protagonist, Joe Coutts, lamenting his milquetoast life and hoping for some excitement, something different. Yet, in spite of similar themes and the reappearance of characters found in several of Erdrich’s works, she does break new ground in The Round House by taking a more political tone and highlighting historic legal difficulties faced by the Chippewa due to laws and policies created by the U.S. Like many of Erdrich’s works, The Round House revolves around a Chippewa family living on a reservation in North Dakota. Louise Erdrich manages to merge both old and new in her most recent novel, The Round House.
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