“Small trees had attacked my parents’ house foundation. They were just seedlings with one or two rigid healthy leaves. Nevertheless, the stalky shoots had managed to squeeze through the knife cracks… They had grown into the unseen wall and it was difficult to pry them loose” (Erdrich 1), Erdrich writes in her opening scene of The Round House. As the reader begins to submerge themself into the novel, they are not yet aware of the correlations between those words and the event that is about to be introduced; rape. However, it answers the purpose of a metaphor, so as to understand/recognize the complexities of rape. The detailed description of how the weeds manage to damage the foundation, “squeezing” and “growing” through every “crack” they find,…show more content… They often times experience the course of trauma in various stages as Erdrich reflects through Geraldine. Victims of rape, after suffering such degree of disempowerment, can exhibit efforts to return to a somewhat normalcy. However, regression often takes place and the entering to a state of reclusion follows. After Geraldine’s attack, she seems to be able to somehow resume her routine, yet things soon escalate when triggered by the unwarned touch of Bazil, her husband, while she was doing the dishes, as Joe recounts: “Walking through the kitchen door, I heard a splintering crash. And then a keen, low anguished cry. My mother was backed up to the sink, trembling, breathing heavily… Between them on the floor lay a smashed casserole” (Erdrich 42). Geraldine’s trauma caused her to have a hyper startle response, leading to her confinement and deterioration, together with sleeping and eating disturbances. “Her face was a pale smudge in the dim air, and her features were smeared with
