My Thoughts on... "The Round House" by Louise Erdrich

Empathy. It seems to be a theme among good books. At least somewhere in a good novel we find empathy. This novel had me feeling empathetic the whole way through. I found myself often hoping for things to somehow get better and more clear for not only the main character but for the supporting characters as well. There is a constant feeling of sadness for the situation these characters are experiencing. To start the story the mother of the main character gets raped. This theme continues and the story line never looks up from this point. The second the incident occurs, the minds of every character became frantic and motivated with the right motives, but the wrong ideas for doing so. The main character in this novel Joe, is constantly going against what people are telling him and against what is morally right and wrong. Joe starts off with good intentions trying to give his mother justice and peace, but ends up fueling himself with a hate fire that leads to him being an accomplice in a murder. This blurs the lines of where Joe turned from good intentions to immoral intentions. I found myself close reading the section when I thought I saw the switch. This ended up being for me at least very early in the story. The part where Joe finds out who raped his mother, he turns his motives officially to a dark place that is driven by hate. Overall, this book was not one that I would have read if not for it being required, this type of novel is not exciting or even an interest for me. It is my personal opinion, but I would not recommend this book to someone who has a hard time with violence, rape, murder, etc. This book to me would also be classified as a hate novel. By this I mean the whole theme of the book is closely if not all related towards the theme of hate. I personally do not like these books, and would not say that I enjoyed this book at all. It is a shinning example social injustice.

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