The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Over the summer, I read the book The Round House by Louise Erdrich. Two of the sentences that I pulled from her book was a quote that just blew me away. The statement was, " The shock of it reached me. She sees the murderer in me, I thought."(Erdrich 293) These two sentences are so powerful because to actually know that you have killed someone and to see the fear in someone's eyes who knew what you have done is just terrifying. I've seen in movies how people look at other people who are "murderers". Their eyes are full of fear and shock. Imagine that you are the actual person who was being thought of as the "murderer" and someone you know is staring at you with the same eyes of fear and shock as they are in the movies. Except that in the movies, they were acting but in your situation, it's actually happening.

The theme of this book was to always think before you do. Every little decision you make can impact your life. From what color crayon you want use, to which house you want to buy. Some decisions just impact your life longer than others do. That certain light blue crayon that you want to use probably won't impact your life as much as the cost of the house you want to buy and live in for a couple of years or maybe even for the rest of your life. Decisions also impact others around you, not just you. If you break a cookie and share it with someone, you had just brightened your day and someone else's day as well. But if you drop your cookie on accident, give your cookie to someone and they find out that you had given them a cookie that had fallen on the floor, you just ruined someone's day and it may ruin yours too. The main character Joe, definitely changed throughout the book. At first, he was a happy thirteen year-old kid who only wanted to make his father and mother proud of him. That is until his mother was attacked by someone Joe didn't even know. At that time all he wanted was revenge on the person who had attacked his mother. In the end, Joe got what he wanted, but I don't think him, his friends, or his family will ever be the same again. From the mother's perspective, everything was fine until she got attacked. I believe she knew who the attacker was but decided not to tell anyone. The day she was attacked will haunt her dreams forever. She knew that her son wants revenge, but she wanted an adult or the police to find and handle the criminal that wanted to kill her. She just wanted all of her fears, her pain, and her sorrows to just wash away as if they had never happened. And towards the end of the book, she felt that her son was keeping something from her. She felt a burden that she must carry with her, a giant crack in her heart that will take a long time to heal. Always think before you do because if you don't, it may lead to bad results. Joe wanted revenge, just something to be done to the "criminal" and instead of letting the adults handle the problem, he decided to handle it himself. This action will lead to severe consequences. This article will give you a summary of the book. It also tells you their opinion about Joe and what he is going through. Click for the link.