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
Tunde goes to help the young man who had to lick up Tatiana’s wine and broken glass, an incident that Tunde photographed. The young man, Peter, pulls eight glass shards out of his throat, and Tunde takes a final picture of these shards. Peter, who is only 17, is crying. Tunde writes in his notes: “At first we did not speak our hurt because it was not manly. Now we do not speak it because we are afraid and ashamed and alone without hope, each of us alone.”
Alderman shifts the perspective of the scene to show the extent of Tatiana’s cruelty. Tunde’s notes also elaborate on the fact that even today gender expectations are harmful to men. The expectation that men should be strong leads them not to express pain—which Tunde suggests can be harmful, or even a weakness. This is another way in which power can hurt the ones who wield it.
Themes
Peter begs Tunde not to leave the country, because Tatiana is going to try to make the press leave. Peter gives him a note, on which is written “THEY’RE GOING TO TRY TO KILL US.” When Tunde is back in his room, he files the story with CNN.
Peter’s warning demonstrates the level of corruption that Tatiana is willing to achieve: wanting to subjugate and even kill men, simply because she now has the power to do so.
Themes
When Tunde wakes, CNN emails back saying they can’t sell the story right now. He sends out three emails to other news sites, but gets back three more rejections. He then goes to YouTube, intending to post it to his channel, but it says the site is not available in this region. Tunde thinks about the young man’s warning, and burns a DVD. He puts it in an envelope addressed to Nina; he’s left materials with her before for safekeeping.
Tunde’s sending his materials to Nina foreshadows her eventual betrayal of him. The fact that the networks are refusing to publish the story is concerning, as the ability to get the story out is in and of itself a kind of power afforded to the men who are now being subjugated and tortured. But the networks refuse to tell that story, and so the men’s suffering becomes just as hidden as women’s once was.
Themes
Tunde remains in the country, while most of the other reporters leave. He attends services in the new churches and finds an underground service of the old religion where the priest asks him not to forget them. He is told that the police no longer investigate the murders of men—even young boys. Tunde documents this but doesn’t publish anything.
Again, the necessity of Tunde’s reporting becomes clear as he documents more and more extreme injustices, like murders of young men going completely unpunished.
Themes
Get the entire The Power LitChart as a printable PDF.
In Tunde’s sixth week in the country, Tatiana’s Minister for Justice gives a press conference. She announces that, due to men selling secrets to Bessapara’s enemies, there are new laws being instated. Each man in the country must have a passport stamped with the name of a female guardian. Her written permission is required for any travel he undertakes. If he does not have a female guardian, he must report to the police station and will be imprisoned. Any man who breaks these laws—even non-citizens—will be subject to capital punishment.
These specific laws seem both absurd and horrific in Bessapara, particularly as they are applied to men. But they parallel the laws restricting women in a variety of countries in the modern-day. Thus Alderman calls attention to the way that the world often turns a complacent blind eye to regimes that enforce sexist laws.
Themes
There are other laws instated as well: men are not permitted to drive cars, own businesses, gather in groups larger than three without a woman present, or vote. Any woman who sees a man breaking these laws is required to discipline him immediately.
These laws also have direct parallels with current laws in some countries. These laws not only curtail men’s freedoms, but they also make women either complicit in these corrupt statutes or criminals themselves—which makes it hard for individual women to object, even though they’re in a position of power now.
Themes
Tunde gets drinks with a few other male reporters who discuss whether to stay in the country or leave. Tunde goes up to his room and starts to pack. He turns on the TV and sees another story about domestic terrorism in Idaho. UrbanDox has successfully changed the story: these groups are now the only thing that people associate with men’s rights. Tunde leaves the next morning around 4:30 a.m. He leaves the non-essentials like his suitcase and dress shoes, taking only two changes of clothes, notes, his laptop, phone, and cameras. He sets out on the road.
Alderman suggests here how important perspective is in shaping the news and influencing broader power dynamics. When the news anchors choose to focus on male extremists and domestic terrorists, people become outraged and miss the actual injustices that are being forced upon men. Tunde, however, sets out to try to correct that.
Themes
Neil provides an image of rock art discovered in northern France that depicts the “curbing” procedure: male genital mutilation, which is still practiced in several European countries. “Key nerve endings in the penis are burned out as the boy approaches puberty.” After the procedure, it is impossible for a man to achieve an erection without skein stimulation by a woman. Many of these men will “never be able to ejaculate without pain.”
“Curbing” serves as another parallel, this time with female genital mutilation, an atrocity which still occurs in some countries today and for no other reason than to make sex less pleasurable for women. The inequality in the book is shocking, but it is fictional. The parallel inequality occurring in the world today, however, is very real.
Themes
