Indelible Trauma: The Case of Geraldine in The Round House

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_14How to use a DOI?

Keywords

trauma; systemic injustice; post-colonialism; cultural identity; resilience

Abstract

This article analysis explores Geraldine’s trauma in Louise Erdrich’s The Round House, emphasizing its cultural, systemic, and psychological dimensions. Framed by Judith Herman’s PTSD theory, her suffering stems from sexual violence, the desecration of Ojibwe sacred spaces, and legal failures denying tribal justice. Colonial oppression and patriarchal violence compound her trauma, reflecting broader Indigenous struggles. Geraldine’s symptoms—hypervigilance, emotional withdrawal—mirror systemic disempowerment, yet her resilience through spirituality underscores trauma as resistance. The novel critiques U.S. legal inequities and cultural erasure, revealing trauma as both personal and collective in post-colonial contexts.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jian Bai
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/22
TI  - Indelible Trauma: The Case of Geraldine in The Round House
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 4th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 117
EP  - 123
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_14
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-432-7_14
ID  - Bai2025
ER  -