The Round House

            The Round House is a story that often finds the reader questioning morality and what is the right thing to do. Louise Erdrich focuses the extremely difficult topic rape and furthers the tragedy by using the family dynamic behind it. When Joe’s mother is found in her car bloody and covered in vomit and gasoline. The rape of the mother is symbolic in the idea of the history of Native Americans and Erdrich compounds that by initially implicating Father Travis much like the forceful religious “settlers” that attacked Native Americans throughout history. The representation of Native Americans in the classroom is something that I believe needs to be brought up more frequently and I believe is Louise Erdrich is a perfect example of strong Native representation as well as Erdrich who focuses on the struggles of Native American issues in a many of her novels. Representation of minorities in the classroom is a must.

            With that being said the issues in this novel are not easy to deal with and can and will have significant impact on many of the students. Taking a novel this intense to the administration would require some significant convincing on how this is to be used as a teaching tool. With things like rape, abuse, murder, and alcoholism finding a place for this particular novel in the class could be cause for concern amongst parents and administration alike. However, Louise Erdrich is an accomplished Native American author and has many other novels that could be used in the classroom. I also believe that much of the content in this novel is real life issues that can and should be covered in the classroom as well as Native American literature that should also be used as often as possible. Using parts of this novel may be the only way to get this novel comfortably in the classroom and those parts would be a powerful look at violence against women and Native Americans and social issues are something that students need to learn about.