The Round House

Normally, teenagers progressively receive more responsibilities as they age until they turn 18 and are capable of learning the rest on their own. This wasn't the case, however, for teenager Antone Bazil Coutts, also known as Joe. His mother was raped when he was only thirteen and lived a somber, isolated lifestyle from then on, leading to his inevitable passage into adulthood happening at an earlier stage in life than it should have. Louise Erdrich foreshadows this in the first chapter of The Round House through the image of the Handbook of Federal Indian Law, by Felix Cohen. This book symbolizes Joe's mental coming of age and his rapid maturation into the new realm of adulthood.
It is first evident that this book is a representation of Joe's …show more content…
When she had generally recovered from the physical wounds of her rape, instead of drawing closer to her family, she felt a lack of security and went into a deep isolation; she was so emotionally and mentally impacted by the even that she was unable to handle the touch of any man, including Joe and his father. This left her incapacitated for most work and forced Joe to take care of himself and her. Erdrich probably chose Cohen's book to foreshadow this and represent Joe's actual transition into adulthood once his mother was incapable of taking care of him. Also, the condition of the book and the fact that it had been passed down several generations, indicates that the passage into adulthood is a rite everyone must go through and that it's not pleasant. It leaves it's mark in every aspect, physically, mentally, and spiritually, no matter how much one tries to live a perfect life. This is obvious through all the trials Joe goes through after his mother's attack, including being hit by his mother for the first time in his …show more content…
As his mother's mental state degraded, his father asked him to start searching through his files for possible suspects in her rape case in order to bring justice to the man who cause the her and her family so much pain. Joe felt like "[his] father was treating [him] as his assistant...[Joe] glanced instinctively at the Cohen shelf. [Joe's father] nodded again, raised his eyebrows a fraction, and lip-pointed at the stack near [Joe's] elbow" (44). Joe realized that his childhood days were over and that it was time to move into the world he only experienced the few times he read the advanced handbook. Joe was unprepared for his mother's depression and did not even know what rape was, yet he was forced to deal with both at a such a young age. Cohen's book is clearly the perfect image for the radical change that Joe experienced so early in his lifetime. This rite of passage brings Joe closer to the realm of his parents and the struggles faced by Native Americans of that