"The Round House" -- Blog 11

Like many of the stories that we have discussed in this class, “The Round House” is a coming of age novel for Joe, a thirteen-year-old, Chippewa boy. His mother, Geraldine, is tortured and raped at the beginning of the novel. Throughout the novel, Joe faces tribulation after tribulation, most of which stem from the event at beginning of the novel. First his mother is raped, then he gets caught spying on Father Travis, his father, Bazil, has a heart attack at the grocery store, Linden, his mother’s rapist, is acquitted of the crime, Joe tries to kill him, fails, and then Joe’s friend Cappy has to help him, then on their way to Montana, they get in a car crash, and Cappy dies while Zack and Angus, Joe’s other two friends, are injured.

As a coming of age novel, “The Round House” features moments that make it more of an adult novel. It has moments that I would not necessarily feel comfortable having my students read the novel aloud, I would not object if they wanted to read it for a project or for a reading circle, and the student(s) requesting to use seemed mature enough to deal with some of the adult moments within the story. The story has mentions of rape, features teens drinking alcohol, and has a murder and a drunk driving accident involving teens in which one of the teens dies and two are fairly seriously injured. However, Joe successfully avenges the rape of his mother by shooting her rapist, Linden, even though Cappy is the one who ends up killing Linden because Joe misses the vital organs, hitting Linden in the stomach, then freezes up, and Cappy has to finish the job.


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