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Louise Erdrich The Round House Analysis

Decent Essays

As Louise Erdrich tells her story of The Round House, choosing to use Joe’s character as the narrator shows how he tries to learn the difference between right and wrong in terms of Lark’s sentence. While he is only thirteen years old, this novel’s coming of age during the harsh reality of his mother’s abuse helps the reader learn more about the case of his mother’s rape as well. By choosing Joe’s character as the narrator, the overall mystery of the story is intensified because the reader is understanding what really happened to Joe’s mother along with him. Understanding the story itself from Joe’s perspective is also positive because the reader gets a less opinionated stand point of the situation as opposed to one of the older characters who are wiser and more understanding of the general laws in relation to the justice served from the case. Therefore, readers get multiple stand points from Joe’s experiences while he comes to the conclusion of killing Linden from his belief that revenge is the only way to serve him justice. Although Joe believed that it was only right to kill Linden, Erdrich’s technique in using Joe as the narrator teaches the great coming of age lesson that as people grow up …show more content…

By telling Joe to stop looking for the attacker is only feeding him to keep going because children usually like to do the opposite of what their elders tell them. Joes’ childish instinct to kill Linden in the end only intensifies the idea that while his parents did not keep him within their “web”, his action was not right because Linden’s right to be free in the world was said under law orders. Even though Joe’s dad pleaded for him to stop, he felt that standing up for his family was best because it only felt like it made sense to him at the

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