Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Power, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power and Violence
Corruption
Gender Reversals and Sexism
Stories, History, and Perspective
Religion and Manipulation
Revolution and Social Change
Summary
Analysis
In a dark basement in a town in rural Moldova, a 13-year-old girl brings stale bread and fish to a group of women huddled on a dirty mattress. The women have asked her for things in the past—some way to communicate with the outside world—but they think she may be deaf. But this time, she looks around, and seeing that no one is there, takes the hand of one of the women and wakes up the power in her.
Alderman establishes yet again the standard contemporary dynamic between men and women, and the ways in which men abuse and violate women. Here, their ability to gain the power is exciting, but it also forces readers to recognize that without this power shift, women in today’s society who experience the same horrors have no real means of liberation and are ignored by society.
Themes
The women wait in the dark and practice. Some of them have been held captive for so long that they never knew this power existed. They believe God has sent a miracle. One of the overseers comes to unshackle a woman who thought she was going to be a secretary in Berlin. When he does, the women descend on him and kill him. They use his keys to unlock each other’s bonds, then they kill every man in the house.
Gaining the power serves as a turning point for these women. Like what happened in Riyadh, having the ability to hurt their captors creates a drastic shift in power, which allows them to escape their abuse and finally retaliate for the horrors they’ve experienced.
Themes
Moldova is the world capital of human sex-trafficking. There are thousands of basements like this one, some with men and children. This same thing happens again and again. Tunde files a series of reports and interviews from Moldova; the women trust him because of his reports from Riyadh.
At night, Tunde writes fast and furiously. He is now planning a massive book on this sweeping tide of history: interviews and reports, accompanied by online footage. He opens the chapter on Moldova describing how the power was passed from hand to hand, then writes about the new online religion, and how it shored up support for women taking over towns.
Tunde’s descriptions demonstrate how power can be a cycle. The ability to hurt and control others led to a new religious belief. This, in turn, inspired women to rise up and assert their own power, leading revolutions in order to control towns.
Themes
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Tunde interviews Moldovan president Viktor Moskalev five days before the government falls. Moskalev tells Tunde that they are moving to quash the rebels, but Tunde is skeptical: the paramilitary gangs have captured weapons, body armor, and ammunition. Viktor implies that he would bomb his own country in order to stop them if need be.
Viktor’s responses to the paramilitary groups inform readers early on about the corruption of power. Viktor would rather kill Moldovan citizens than cede his power to the women. He is more concerned with maintaining his power and the status quo than with actually making society better or protecting the people he leads.
Themes
After the interview, Tunde waits for an embassy car to take him back to his hotel. As he waits, Tatiana Moskalev, Viktor’s wife, enters the room. She shows Tunde her power, making the lights flicker on and off. Viktor doesn’t know she can do it. They flirt a bit, and then she tells Tunde that the new King of Saudi Arabia, Awadi-Atif, is in exile in the north of Moldova and has been feeding Viktor money and arms. Tunde asks why Tatiana is telling him this. She says that she wants him to remember her when he becomes very successful.
This exchange between Tatiana and Tunde, in reality, becomes very ironic. While she assumes that Tunde will become very successful, while she instead will be relatively forgotten, the opposite ends up becoming true. Tatiana leverages her power to become the leader of a new nation, while Tunde becomes almost forgotten and does not receive the recognition he deserves for his book.
Themes
Five days later, Viktor Moskalev dies of a heart attack in his sleep. The Supreme Court moves to appoint Tatiana as interim leader. Tunde notes that Tatiana wears a small gold brooch in the shape of an eye in her first public appearance. The transfer of power is interrupted by a military coup spearheaded by Viktor’s Chief of Defense, who takes more than half the army. But the women freed from the basements of Moldova instinctively support Tatiana.
The implication of the heart attack is that it was really Tatiana who killed Viktor, just as Allie killed Sister Veronica. And like Allie’s, Tatiana’s rise to power shows how the ability to hurt or kill others directly causes an increase in one’s own power in other aspects of life.
Themes
Tatiana moves her army and weapons to a castle on the borders of Moldova. She declares a new kingdom, uniting lands from four separate countries. She calls the country Bessapara, after the ancient people who live there. Tunde records it all. He writes, “There is a scent of something in the air, a smell like rainfall after a long drought. First one person, then five, then five hundred, then villages, then cities, then states. Bud to bud and leaf to leaf. Something new is happening.”
Tunde’s writing here recalls the words in the Book of Eve at the very beginning of the novel. The tree, then, becomes a metaphor not only for the way that power branches into smaller and more varied iterations of itself, but also for the shape of revolution. The smallest parts of society are changing rapidly and all at once, so that when one steps back, the tree as a whole has also changed.
Themes
