The Power of One: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

When the narrator returns to school, he secretly brings Granpa Chook with him. He contrives a little chicken house from salvaged material in an abandoned orchard near the dormitories. The first afternoon they’re back, the narrator hears a commotion in the orchard and sees Granpa Chook fighting with—and defeating—a grass snake. Granpa Chook bites the snake’s head clean off and eats it, and the narrator drapes the snake’s body over a branch just outside the dormitory window.

After lights out, the older boys bring the narrator to the Judge, who wants to show off the crude swastika tattoo he gave himself over the holidays. The Judge tells the narrator and the others about Adolf Hitler, a man who hates the English and who has promised to liberate the Afrikaner people from their hated oppressors. He promises not to kill the narrator until after Hitler arrives. A terrified and confused narrator who, at five, knows nothing about global affairs, incorrectly believes Hitler must be a new headmaster.

The next morning, Mevrou learns about Granpa Chook. Enraged by his presence, she threatens to slaughter and cook him, but when he gobbles up some cockroaches that are running around the kitchen, she decides he can live because he is useful.

The narrator is a bright child who quickly catches up and then surpasses the other students in his grade, all of whom are two years older than him—even though Afrikaans (the unique language of the Afrikaners) is a second language to him. But he doesn’t show off his accomplishments, afraid of drawing attention to himself. His strategy works, for the most part, until September 3, 1939. In the dining hall that day, the drunk headmaster announces that Britain has declared war on Germany, ending his speech with “Heil Hitler.” The Judge jumps up on a table, exposes his tattoo, and gets all the children—including Peekay—to chant, “Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler.”

The narrator, remembering what the Judge said would happen when Hitler arrived, starts planning to run away with Granpa Chook. But in class that afternoon, he gets in trouble with Miss du Plessis, the teacher. When she tries to hit him with her steel-edged ruler, she accidentally cuts his ear and faints at the sight of his blood. The narrator—and the other students—believe that she’s dead. Their frightened screams bring another teacher to the scene. As he arrives, the narrator faints in terror.

The narrator wakes up a little while later in the dormitory under the watchful eye of Mevrou. A doctor is coming to examine him, and she tells him to say he fell from a tree. The narrator does as he is told. Dr. Henny Boshoff, a kindly man already acquainted with the narrator, stitches up the cut in his ear. Afterwards, the narrator asks if Dr. Henny is British. The question upsets Dr. Henny, who asserts that they’re all South African—British and Afrikaner alike. Miss du Plessis never returns and is replaced by Mrs. Gerber, a much nicer woman.