39 pages • 1 hour read
Louise ErdrichThe Round House
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 10-Chapter 11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10
One day, Joe and Bazil go shopping at Geraldine’s request. She has retreated into herself again since Linden’s release, though she tries hard to recover. At the grocery store, Joe and Bazil see Linden. Overcome with anger, Bazil attacks Linden. Linden manages to escape, however, and Bazil has a heart attack. Bazil is taken to a hospital in Fargo. While waiting for Bazil to recover, Joe and his mother find out that Linden has been attacked and beaten up by Geraldine’s friends and family. Geraldine realizes that Linden will be a problem she will have to deal with for the rest of the foreseeable future. Not wanting his mother to be burdened by her fear of Linden, Joe decides to take matters into his own hand.
He hatches a plan, deciding to pretend to be interested in church so that he can join the youth program and learn how to shoot. Appearing to see through his intentions, Father Travis refuses to let Joe shoot. Cappy teaches Joe how to shoot using Cappy’s father’s shotgun. When Cappy begins to worry that his father will notice the missing ammunition, Joe convinces his mother to take him shoe shopping, then sneaks away to buy more ammunition for the gun. Joe speaks with Linda to ascertain Linden’s whereabouts. She eventually admits that Linden likes to golf early in the morning before anyone else is on the golf course. Seeing a chance, Joe waits for Cappy’s family to go away for a powwow. He breaks into their home, making it look like a burglary, then takes the shotgun and hides it in the woods.
Joe watches the golf course for several days; when Linden finally arrives to golf, he shoots Linden in the chest. The shot hits but is not fatal. Joe shoots Linden again but, again, the shot does not kill Linden. Linden eventually realizes where the shots came from and sees Joe. He begins to yell for help, but Cappy suddenly emerges and shoots Linden in the head, killing him.
Chapter 11
With his revenge carried out, Joe and Cappy leave the golf course and the woods. They go to Cappy’s place to get a car and then stash the shotgun under Linda’s porch. The boys then head to Whitey’s gas station, though by now the news of Linden’s death has made its rounds. Whitey, too, realizes what has happened. He gives Joe and Cappy alcohol and tells them to go drink. They do, and eventually pass out outside. Whitey then sends them home, though he helps Joe by taking his shirt.
When Joe arrives home, his parents question his whereabouts. They are convinced that he had something to do with the murder, as are the police, who also want to know his whereabouts. Joe, however, has been given a credible alibi by Whitey. When Joe catches the flu in the hubbub of what he has done, he has surreal dreams about his life and his crime. He eventually awakens and sees his mother outside, planting flowers. This heartens Joe. He realizes that killing Linden was a terrible thing, but necessary. His mother’s peace and his family’s peace are a price he is willing to pay for his crime. Joe later learns that Linden most likely buried Mayla’s body at the construction site via a dream by Bugger, and that if/when the body is found, Linden would have surely gone to jail.
Cappy receives a letter from Zelia’s parents. They tell Cappy to stay away from their daughter and that they are moving her away from Montana. Disheartened, Cappy and Joe, along with Zack and Angus, take a road trip to find Zelia. Along the way, Cappy falls asleep at the wheel. When Joe awakens, the car has crashed and Cappy is dead. The police soon arrive, and the boys are taken to the police station. Joe’s parents arrive to take him home. Joe thinks of the ghost he saw, the same ghost he sees while holding Cappy after the accident. The ghost tells him to let go but he cannot. Joe returns home with his parents, feeling broken.
Chapter 10-Chapter 11 Analysis
Joe has been struggling with the concepts of growth and love, and what he is willing to do for these things, throughout the novel. In this section, Joe realizes that both growth and love mean ensuring that his family is at peace. Linden’s release from jail means that his family will never have peace. An example of this takes place with Bazil’s heart attack. Bazil attacks Linden in a grocery store and has a heart attack as a result. While Joe and his mother wait for Bazil to recover, they hear that Linden has been attacked by friends and family. Geraldine realizes that she will have to deal with the evilness that is Linden. Joe does not want his family to be burdened by this evil and decides to do something about it. Joe hatches a plan to kill Linden, and with Cappy’s help he carries this plan out. Joe solves his family’s problem through violence, and though his mother returns to her old self after Linden’s death, Joe must live with what he has done.
The narrative leaves Joe’s guilt or innocence for the reader to determine. Joe commits a crime. He plots a murder, and aids in the murder of someone who had committed heinous crimes and had never been punished for these crimes. Moreover, Joe’s family begins healing with Linden’s death. In this sense, Joe’s “evil act” can be seen as a good act, as good drawn from evil, as Father Travis had said earlier. At the same time, however, violence and injustice are stereotypes of Native American reservations, and Joe plays into this stereotype with his actions. His vigilante justice puts him outside of tribal law, yet he has also helped his friends and family by killing Linden. The narrative forces the reader to deal with the concepts of good and evil and how these terms apply to crimes of love and crimes of passion. Cappy is later killed, which some might equate to punishment for his involvement in Linden’s death. Again, the reader must decide if Cappy and Joe have been or should have been punished. Ultimately, Erdrich’s narrative presents the evidence, just like a court case, leaving the reader to assess the facts.
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