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
The girls in the convent watch another girl (Roxy, it is later revealed) wade into the ocean at high tide and send her power out. It seems to go on endlessly. The girls send word to Eve that someone has come. After Roxy killed Primrose, she had to find a place to lie low for a while. She had chosen South Carolina, thinking that she would try to find Mother Eve. Her brother Ricky had tried to set her up with a place to stay, but Roxy insisted that she didn’t need anyone to look after her.
As the characters intertwine more and more, Alderman shows how the power connects them. Allie is drawn to Roxy because of her strength, while Roxy is drawn to Allie because of her ability to get people to follow her. Each one sees how the power can be used for a greater purpose.
Themes
Allie walks down to the water, and she and Roxy introduce themselves. Allie is surprised to hear that Roxy is British. Roxy is even more surprised to realize that Allie is exactly the person she has been looking for. “It’s a miracle!” Roxy cries. They sit together, talking; Allie senses Roxy’s power and finds it is nearly infinite. Roxy jokes about the number of fish she must have killed in the water. Allie laughs, then thinks it’s been a while since she laughed “without deciding beforehand that laughing was the smart thing to do.” Allie quiets the voice in her head for a time.
Here, Allie reinforces the idea that Eve has not simply become a means for survival: taking on Eve’s persona is now an active means of deception and even self-deception. The fact that she quiets the voice is also telling: it reveals how comfortable she is with Roxy, and how much the voice is simply a means of affirming that there is a powerful protector watching over her. As Allie admits later, with Roxy she already feels safe.
Themes
Roxy explains that she wanted to come to America because she saw Eve’s videos and understood that Eve is thinking about what the power means for the future. Roxy admits that she thinks everything will change—she is most excited by the things men and women will be able to do together with the power. Allie admits that she sees things a bit differently; she has no interest in working with men.
Allie and Roxy represent two different perspectives on how to handle power. Roxy argues for a moderate approach that centers hopefully on equality, while Allie demonstrates that she has no real interest in equality. While she claims simply to care about justice for women, Alderman demonstrates how frequently power is treated as a zero-sum game, and that this constant desire for power leads to corruption and suppression of men.
Themes
The narration flashes back to Terry’s funeral. Barbara, Terry’s mother, had sobbed. Roxy had taken more cocaine. Roxy realized that she’d gotten in a bit of trouble over what she’d done, as none of the mourners knew how to talk to her, or even how to look at her.
The ability to cause violence is certainly an asset, but this episode also shows how it comes with costs. First, it puts people in more dangerous positions, as they are constantly forced to face retaliatory violence and perhaps inflict it themselves. And second, it also inspires fear to a degree that people may not actually want; here, that fear leaves Roxy isolated from her family.
Themes
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At the convent, they give Roxy food and warm clothes. Eve leads a lesson in Scripture. They’re finding Scripture that “works for them, rewriting the bits that don’t.” Eve talks about the story of Ruth, calling it the “most beautiful story of friendship in the whole of the Bible.” She says that like the story, the women in the convent have each other to rely on.
This episode serves as the first instance in which the girls explicitly manipulate Scripture to suit their own narratives. In the story referenced, Ruth tells her mother-in-law Naomi that she is choosing to accept the God of the Israelites—yet Eve reframes it as a story of friendship and female empowerment. Again, Alderman shows how interpretations of stories can shift to suit different purposes.
Themes
That night, Allie visits Roxy in the room that they’ve given her. Allie admits that she has a good feeling about Roxy—that Roxy’s strength will help her “save the women.” Allie gets a text and explains that people keep sending the convent money, but only Sister Maria Ignacia has a bank account. Roxy offers to help Allie and set up new bank accounts for her. The next day, a man arrives with seven passports for Eve and a new set of bank accounts.
Alderman provides another example of how forms of power can branch into other forms. Allie is able to use the religious power she commands and turns it into economic power as she receives more and more money from women around the world. Similarly, Roxy’s power allows her to gain other forms of capital like passports and bank accounts—in essence, new identities.
Themes
Another flashback: Roxy and Darrell are together in the garden. Darrell asks Roxy what it felt like to kill Primrose. She admits it felt good to get vengeance for her mother. Darrell says, “I wish I could do it.”
This exchange foreshadows Darrell’s eventual betrayal of Roxy, overcome by his desire for the power. This demonstrates the corruptive nature of the power, even for those who don’t have it.
Themes
Roxy and Eve talk a lot in the next few days, and Roxy makes friends with the other girls as they practice their powers together. She teaches them a trick where she throws a bottle of water in someone’s face and electrifies the water as it leaves the bottle. They practice the move, laughing as they throw water.
The girls begin to normalize violence as they grow up, in the same way that rough play is often normalized for boys in the real world. This has disastrous consequences later on, however, when they take more and more pleasure in using their power on others simply for the sake of hurting them.
Themes
One afternoon, Allie notices that being with Roxy quiets the voice. Roxy makes her feel safe. Allie tells Roxy some of her actual background: that she came from foster care and was passed around a lot when she was younger. Roxy listens sympathetically. Allie asks if Roxy has killed someone. When Roxy doesn’t deny it, Allie admits that she’s also killed. Roxy says the person “probably deserved it.” Allie replies, “He did.”
The fact that the voice is quieted when Allie feels safe implies that it is not actually God speaking through her, but simply a kind of defense mechanism that she relies on in order to achieve that same sense of safety. This desire has an interesting bearing on the end of Allie’s arc—much later, after Roxy has lost her power, Allie feels that she must gain power globally because she feels that it is the only way she can truly be safe.
Themes
Roxy tells Allie another story: when she was seven, her piano teacher stuck his hand down her pants and told her not to tell Bernie. She did anyway, and her dad beat the man and even chopped one of his balls off. She says that after that, every time she saw the man he ran away from her. Allie says, “that sounds good.” Allie tells Roxy that one of the girls in the convent has a father in the police force, and that they’re coming to shut down the convent in a few days.
Roxy and Allie both relate to these scenes of sexual violence. This establishes again the baseline gender dynamics before the power awakens and the liberty men feel when they have physical power over women. But once women gain the power, this dynamic reverses and women feel free to sexually assault men, as is described in the next chapter with Tunde.
Themes
Another flashback: two weeks after Primrose’s death, Bernie has killed the rest of Primrose’s gang as well. When Roxy hears the news, she thanks her father, hugging him. He tells her the story of the night she was born, and how he was so surprised to have a girl. When he held her for the first time, she’d peed all over his pants—and that’s how he knew she would be good luck.
The genuine affection between Roxy and her father only makes their relationship’s disintegration more painful, as it results from Bernie’s inability to yield any power whatsoever. There is also irony in his story: the child that he thought would pose the least threat to him actually becomes the most threatening to him, because the power leads to such enormous societal shifts.
Themes
Twelve armed policemen approach the convent, having been told by a nun who’d escaped that the girls were threatening and violent. It’s been raining, and the girls have made the gardens a sopping mess with hoses and barrels of seawater. And so when the police approach, Eve only has to put her finger in the water from the back steps. With immense control, she deadens their arms one by one, making them drop their guns. Roxy then jolts the water, making the policemen drop to their knees.
Even though Eve and Roxy are able to use their control in order not to hurt the police permanently, this episode has a darker underlying implication: the girls feel that they have license to break the law simply because they are able to control and hurt the police officers.
Themes
Upstairs, one of the girls has been filming this. Eve records a message to go out over the footage, saying that she doesn’t want people to give up their beliefs. She says that God has “changed Her garment merely” and explains how people of various faiths should turn to the female figures in their respective religions and worship them rather than the male figures. Seeing this miracle, people continue sending money and offers of legal help.
This sermon that Eve shares expands upon her ideology for the world at large. Whereas before she has been primarily adapting Christianity to suit her own religion, now she expands to other religions. Perhaps this is why Eve gains such popularity: it is not so much a desire to change the faith of the people, but simply an adjustment in the priorities of existing religions. Instead of following the primary male figures in each religion, she returns power back to the female figures.
Themes
After this incident, the police force is humiliated, angry, and afraid. Twenty-three days later, a girl named Mez arrives on the convent doorstep in tears. She and her mother Rachel had been coming home from the grocery store when they were stopped and roughed up by the police. When Rachel had retaliated with a bit of power, they pulled out their nightsticks and guns and beat her seven on one. Mez tells the girls that they’ve taken Rachel to the police station.
While the girls are certainly taking advantage of the newfound freedom that their power affords them, Alderman also demonstrates how the police force abuses their power—perhaps even more than the girls in the convent do. Thus, Alderman demonstrates that power can corrupt no matter who holds it.
Themes
Sixty women go to the police station, filming everything along the way. Allie asks the policemen standing outside with rifles to let her see Rachel. When more women start to arrive in support, the police grow nervous, and agree to let Allie see Rachel. Her skull is cracked and her hair is matted with blood. At Allie’s insistence, the police agree to send Rachel to the hospital. Allie returns outside, triumphant, telling the women that they have done good work. Half an hour later, Rachel is being treated and the other women have all gone home.
This incident reinforces two major themes: first, the power of numbers to effect social change. Without this kind of revolutionary protest, the police would not have been nearly as responsive and the injustice might have continued. It also touches on the power, again, of being able to broadcast one’s story. Widening the reach of their message and showing the event from their perspective, Allie is able to gain even more power over the police because they are afraid of how the story will look to outside observers.
Themes
By the time Roxy has been at the convent nine months, Allie has gained followers globally and there are over six hundred women attached to the convent, to the point where they need a bigger building. Roxy, however, is ready to return home. Allie is upset that she is leaving. Roxy tells her that she has an idea about how they can continue to work together even when she’s gone.
With these numbers combined with some of the religious stories that Tunde and Margot have been seeing, Alderman paints a fuller picture of just how popular Eve’s message has become. Even though Eve has been preaching messages of peace and justice up to this point, the reader knows from previous chapters that some of her followers have used religion as a justification for their violent use of their power.
Themes
Allie speaks to the voice in her head for the first time in a long time. The voice says that the only way Allie can be safe is if she “own[s] the place.” Allie asks if she can own the whole world. The voice replies, “You can’t get there from here.”
The voice’s declaration that “you can’t get there from here” hints at one of the novel’s ultimate messages about social change. Sometimes, Alderman argues, even revolutionary change may not be enough—sometimes the world needs to be torn apart completely in order to be rebuilt, as Eve tries to do.
Themes
Neil includes an image of a device found in Thailand, about fifteen hundred years old, for learning to control one’s power. The operator would hold one side of a metal pole and try to set a leaf or piece of paper on fire on the other end. The size suggests that the device is meant for 13- to 15-year-old girls.
As more and more of these fictional rudimentary devices are included in the book, readers begin to understand that these belong to an alternate version of history: one in which women have always been the dominant sex because of the power and their ability to hurt.
Themes
