Race and culture clashes can create violence and this transition will bring with it the risk of social problems. Louise Erdrich’s The Round House shows American readers why sex violence is all over the Indian reservation, because the law system is broken. over the long history, white people do not want Native American have power over the white people or the land. The United States government did not give the rights to the Indian people to have the power to serve justice against white people who had broken the law on the Indian reservation. Her story describes many kinds of violence but focuses on the sexual violence against Native American woman-Joe’s mother. All the violence, historical cultural social, against Native American people,builds up and creates more violence in the society. Sexual violence against women is also a power clash caused by oppression. As we know traditional problems between Native Americans and white people continue. It makes the law still not protect Native American women, the sex violence problem each year causes many Native American women’s assaults to be ignored by the law. Especially when a white man is involved, the Native American justice system cannot always bring the bad men to justice. In The Round House characters are frustrated Joe tells Cappy: “Listen, Cappy,I said, hoarse, nearly whispering. I’m going to call this like it is. Murder,for justice maybe. Murder just the same. I had to say this a thousand times in my head before I said it out loud. But there it is. And I can take him” (Erdrich,280). From this quotation, we can see how Joe is so disappointed that the law system could not help his mother, who has been raped, and this anger emotion translates into physical violence. He tries to help by killing Lark to make justice move in the right direction.
In fact, Louise Erdrich’s story The Round House presents race, culture, and sexual violence as the main cause of all the deaths, which pushes the main character, thirteen-year-old Joe, to kill the Lark for revenge reason. Lark is the bad man who raped Joe’s mother, and is guilty or all the rapes and deaths in this story. The revenge Joe takes is violent:
"Lark walked forward and before he could tap it in I shot at the logo over his heart.I hit him someplace else, maybe in the stomach, and he collapsed. There was aloud silence. I lowered the rifle. Lark rolled over on his knees, staggered to his feet, found his balance, and began to scream. The sound was a high squeal like nothing I’d ever heard. I got the rifle back to my should, reloaded. I was shaking so hard I rested the barrel on a branch, held my breath, and shot again. I couldn’t tell where that shot went ----He locked eyes with me." (282)
This quotation shows the readers the main character Joe’s anger and hopeless, how he uses violence to do justice.He kills the bad person who raped his mother because the Indian reservation justice system does not have the power to lock Lark in jail. As we know all women have a rough time in our society, because women face many kinds of violence in their lifetimes. Also, violence is not always physical or visible, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-paper” is to tell the reader about a woman who is isolated from the society. The main character is depressed after giving birth. Everything is controlled by her husband, and her husband locks her in the room by herself. Instead of helping her, it makes her feel lonely and isolated. In the story the main character cannot take the isolation:
"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder ---I begin to think---I wish John would take me away from here! "(491)
From this quotation, the readers can see how main character wants to see the outside world, but she cannot do that, because she is locked in the room and she cannot disobey her husband.
The pressure of society and culture hurts women. Traditional old culture makes women’s lives so difficult, and causes all kinds of conflict and violence against women when they search for a new life. Violence’s problems are a dark force against women and appear around the world every day. It is a symbol of the reality.Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior clearly reflects real experiences of the author’s mother when she was young.Her mother says: “At first they threw mud and rocks at the house. then they threw eggs and began slaughtering our stock. – Your aunt gave birth in the pigsty that night. The next morning when I went for the water, I found her and the baby plugging up the family well” (Kingston, 5). This quotation about the violence killing a woman, shows old traditional culture taking revenge against who wants to change her life.
People think a different way when they Race and culture different, they fight to each other to get power to control other people, that is the reason for violence.Cultural violence out of control becomes war. As we know during World War II German Nazis killed many Jews and tried to control all of Europe. Why World War II Germany kept fighting and killing people, was because they wanted power over another race. Jews was the victim of racial prejudice by German Nazis, Art Spiegelman’s story “From Maus” shows Vladek’s family wanted to hide from Nazis: “Remember,little one-never tell anybody there are Jews here. They’ll shoot us all” (Spiegelman,1561)! This quotation shows how Germans searched for all the Jews to put then in the camps, where they used gas to execute the Jews. It makes so many Jews leave the country for survival. The Jews and persecuted just for their race and beliefs.
Zitkala Sa(Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)’s story “The Soft-Hearted Sioux” is a sad story about one little boy who went to white people’s missionary school for nine years. He changes his faith to Christianity. He struggles with the culture changes: “Useless was my attempt to change the faith in the medicine-man to that abstract power named God” (Sa, 648). When he comes back from the school his father is very sick. His father needs food to eat, but the boy cannot provide meat for his family to eat. The white people’s school makes him lose his culture and race identity, thus he could not hunt food for himself and his family. No one wants to help him to get meat because outside is very cold and snowing. He kills a white man’s cow for cow meat for his sick father, but the white man does not want him to kill the cow. Then this Indian boy kills the white man to get cow meat. When he has meat, he runs to the home, but his father already died. The boy is force by losing culture to be violent: “In my hand I found my long knife dripping with blood. At my seemed at rick of my senses, for I could not understand it was real. Look long upon the blood-stained snow, the load of meat for my starving father reached my recognition at last. Quickly I tossed it over my shoulder and started again homeward” (Sa, 651). From this quotation, it shows readers how each race and culture’s roots are important. This sad story shows an Indian young man who went to white people’s school for education, but needed to go back for the life he came from. He cannot survive the old traditional culture’s way, because he lost his culture and is forced to be violent.
In fact, many American authors have violent stories to symbolize reality and to show social problems. Each of these violent stories symbolize culture, race, gender and sexuality, and women’s rights. Most the violence is against women, and old traditional culture oppresses women who are still the main victims of domestic violence.Also in the patriarchal society women are a classic victim of society and face many kinds of violence. Behind all the stories’ violence is history, society,race, politics, culture, gender and sexuality, and women’s rights problems which all reflect violence. Violence create more violence, because people fight for power and fight back against culture tradition, and society.
Work Cited
Erdrich,Louise.The Round House, Harper Perennial, 2012.
Hong Kingston, Maxine.The Woman Warrior:
Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts,Vintage International Edition, April 1989.
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wall-paper.”The
Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Nina Baym and Robert S.Levine, vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013, pp. 485-95.
Sa,Zitkala. “The Soft-Hearted Sioux.”The
Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Nina Baym and Robert S.Levine, vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013, pp. 647-51.
Spiegelman,Art. “From Maus.”The Norton Anthology
of American Literature, edited by Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine, vol. 2,W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013, pp. 1552-1568.
