The Existential Predicament Of The Other In Louise Erdrich’s The Round House

Louise Erdrich(1954-)is the leader of Native American Renaissance.Her works are popular in academic circles,publishing circles and common readers.As the author of 15 novels and a great mass of short fictions and poems,Louise Erdrich has won a series of awards,such as National Book Critics Circle Award,Scott O’Dell Award for History Fiction and so on.The Round House published in 2012 is another masterpiece and Erdrich won the U.S National Book Award for it.Erdrich addresses some political and historical issues in The Round House.She begins the novel with Geraldine’s rape case and represents the oppressed fates of natives in mainstream culture.This thesis will explore the existential predicament of Ojibwa people based on the theories of postcolonialism as well as Erdrich’s tentative solution of appealing for justice.This thesis consists of five parts.The introduction examines some related information of Erdrich and The Round House.And then it reviews the recent studies on The Round House at home and abroad.At the end of this section,it gives a brief introduction of postcolonial theories including Edward W.Said,Gayatri C.Spivak,and Homi K.Bhabha.Chapter One demonstrates the root of oppression from the perspective of hybridity.Since the colonizers set foot on reservation,the natives lose their culture purity.Homi Bhabha uses “hybridism” to describe the cultural penetration.And it is not only a label of race but can be seen as one of the roots of oppression.Chapter Two focuses on the oppression of Native Americans in terms of individual as well as collective.On the one hand,native women as the “Other” suffer from the discrimination of gender and ethnic.On the other hand,the white occupy large blocks of natives’ land.What’s worse,they establish boarding schools to assimilate the young generations of Ojibwa.This chapter explores the miserable fate of Ojibwa people.Chapter Three manifests the appeal of the other for justice.Erdrich not only represents the existential predicament of Ojibwa people in the novel,but proposes tentative solutions.She derives nutrition from Ojibwa traditional culture and resurrects the traditional Ojibwa Law.The last part is the Conclusion.Erdrich uses her powerful writing style to draw people’s attention to native people’s existential predicament.She believes that with the joint efforts of several generations,it is possible for Ojibwa people to regain their voice in the mainstream culture.