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Abstract: Since its publication in 2012, the climax to Louise Erdrich's novel The Round House has troubled many readers due to its apparent idealization of vigilante violence. Joe Coutts's execution of Linden Lark, his mother's rapist, feels too easy, too much of a kind with Linden's own vengeful killings. However Erdrich's association of Linden with the Anishinaabe legend of wiindigoo, and Armus-a sadistic creature from Star Trek: The Next Generation-reframes this shooting as a ceremonial sacrifice. We can thereby understand Linden's shooting as what Girard termed the pharmakos, the scapegoat that absorbs and personifies the violence of the larger community and whose death therefore helps short-circuit the violence that Erdrich's afterword assures us is still all too frequently perpetrated on our contemporary Native American reservations.
Keywords: Louise Erdrich, The Round House, Anishinaabe, Ojibway, tribal law, wiindigoo, René Girard, pharmakos, John Borrows, Star Trek: The Next Generation
It's something Daddy told me. A story about a wiindigoo.
Lark's trying to eat us, Joe.
Geraldine Coutts in Louise Erdrich, The Round House
I think you should be destroyed.
Data in "The Skin of Evil" Star Trek: The Next Generation
"Be careful, liberal-minded reader!" reads the end of Maria Russo's New York Times review of Louise Erdrich's The Round House. "In Erdrich's hands, you may find yourself, as I did, embracing the prospect of vigilante justice as regrettable but reasonable, a way to connect to time- less wisdom about human behavior. It wasn't until I put the book down that I recognized-and marveled at-the clever way I had been manipulated."1 This review articulates the discomfort felt by many critics and readers toward the perceived vigilante climax of The Round House since its publication in 2012. The novel details the aftermath of the rape of a Native woman, Geraldine Coutts, by a white man and the byzantine set of contradictory land laws that allows the rapist to walk free. The narrative climaxes in chapter 10 with Coutts's thirteen-year-old son, Joe, wounding the rapist, Linden Lark, with a hunting rifle at a golf course, after which Joe's best friend, Cappy, fires the fatal shot. Something about young Joe's planning and participation in the execution of Linden perhaps feels too easy, too clean, not morally ambiguous enough for an act...