The Round House

Violent is prevalent throughout the narrative—the plot revolves around Geraldine Coutts’ rape. Violence is hinted at on the first page when the narrator explains how he and his father, Bazil, are ripping out saplings that are destroying the home’s foundation, foreshadowing the violence that will soon rip at the foundation of the Coutts family. The saplings are also symbolic of Joe’s youth—despite their “youth,” the saplings can inflict damage. Joe’s killing of Linden speaks to this “dangerous youth.”

Joe’s killing of Linden at the end of the narrative is problematic as it plays into a stereotype of Native Americans, especially those living on reservations, as dangerous and prone to violence. Before Joe kills Linden, there are many depictions of violence. Brothers, like Randall, routinely beat their younger brothers, like Cappy. Mothers hit children, men drink and abuse their wives, and the priest even shoots and kills gophers (a “step up” from the nuns who used to gas the gophers). Whitey, Joe’s uncle, becomes violent after drinking and abuses Sonja, who later leaves him. Violence is shown throughout the narrative as the result of poor judgement or circumstance.

Linden’s violence, however, stands apart. The narrative suggests that he could have taken the file from Geraldine and blackmailed the South Dakota governor without raping Geraldine, without beating her, and without killing Mayla and attempting to kill Geraldine. Linden’s violence highlights how far he has fallen from a moral standpoint; his violence begets violence. Linden’s violence leads to his own death at the hands of Joe and Cappy. Joe’s crime, too, begs the reader to question morality. Is his crime justified as his vigilante justice righted a wrong the system was unwilling to deal with? Is his violence acceptable because his mother and father can now live in peace? Is Cappy’s violent death at the end a result of his own part in killing Linden? The reader is ultimately left to determine if violence can sometimes be justified.

Legal systems and justice are at the heart of the narrative. Joe Coutts is a precocious thirteen-year-old who sneaks into his father’s study to read law books. Joe’s father, Bazil, is a judge on the reservation. Bazil has often said that Joe is not old enough to understand the books, but Joe continues to read them. Early in the novel, Joe sneaks into his father’s study while his father naps to read Felix S. Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law. To Joe, the book is a bible; it holds knowledge of a world he wants to enter—adulthood. The book addresses how law is applied on the reservation. This book, and the weight both Joe and his father place upon it, foreshadows the importance of law in their lives throughout the novel. Joe trusts tribal law; his willingness to learn shows both his love for his father’s work and his desire to know more about the rules that govern his friends and family. However, Joe does not comprehend much of what the book says, foreshadowing of the murkiness of law.

When Geraldine is attacked and raped, one of the resultant quagmires is determining what body of law holds jurisdiction: tribal law, off-reservation law in the form of the state police, or the FBI. While Geraldine is in the hospital being treated, the question of jurisdiction arises. Bazil wants tribal law to handle the case, as he is a respected judge and wants to incarcerate his wife’s attacker. Joe knows that law enforcement from outside the reservation does not always have the best interests of Native Americans at heart. This quagmire will remain throughout the narrative, eventually leading Joe to turn to vigilante justice, a murky “law” in its own right.

Though three different bodies of law might make Geraldine’s predicament more hopeful in that there is more legality at work, the opposite happens. When Linden Lark is finally arrested and tried, due to the murkiness of law at times, he is released from jail. Linden knew tribal law, and he covered Geraldine’s head when he attacked her at the round house. Because Geraldine cannot give an eye-witness account of her own rape, the law is not on her side.

The murkiness of law is also witnessed in the extrajudicial killing of Linden Lark by Cappy and Joe. Joe wants to avenge his mother and try to heal his family. Linden’s actions, though horrific, have not been punished. Joe’s father, Bazil, has a heart attack while confronting Linden, and his mother retreats into herself once more. Joe realizes that he must take the law into his own hand. Though he knows tribal law, and though his father is a judge, he plans and successfully kills Linden (with Cappy’s help), thus committing a crime he views as lawful and just, yet also marring the sanctity of law with his vigilante justice. Joe vies his crime as lawful in that it aligns with how crime would have been treated on the reservation, as in the old customs. These customs of justice, as in an eye for an eye, do not align with tribal law or federal law, which is why the his crime, though lawful in the eyes of most on the reservation, is still considered vigilante justice as it goes against the sanctioned justice of the legal system.