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
Two men break into Roxy’s home while she and her mother are there. It’s clear the men didn’t expect Roxy to be home, as one says in dismay, “the girl’s here.” The shorter man grabs her mother, pushing her against the fireplace; the taller one stuffs Roxy into a closet as she struggles. Roxy starts to feel a prickle in her fingertips, though she doesn’t know what it is.
This initial scene of violence allows Alderman to provide readers with a baseline of the dynamics between men and women in her story. They take place in and are a reflection of contemporary society, in which men largely have power over women. With this episode, she illustrates that this is largely because men are able to cause more hurt, and therefore also inspire fear.
Themes
Roxy’s mother starts screaming, and Roxy breaks out of the closet. She catches the tall man with the door and trips him onto the floor. His nose starts bleeding. The short man has a knife against her mother’s neck. She tells Roxy to run. The short man kicks her mother in the stomach and turns to Roxy with the knife. As he reaches toward her, she grabs his hand and gives a “twist” in some inner muscle, “as if she’d always known how to do it.” The man falls to the floor, clutching his wrist. She sees a long red scar running up his arm, patterned like a fern.
As the struggle continues, Alderman begins to establish the power of the book’s title: the ability of women to conduct electricity in their hands. This power, ultimately, will allow women to gain power globally over men because now they have acquired a greater ability to hurt. With this single change, Alderman argues how the ability to hurt and physically dominate is the capability from which all other power stems.
Themes
The man gets up, and Roxy tries to reach out to touch him again, but nothing happens this time. He grabs her wrists, forces her to her knees, and knocks her out as Roxy’s mother begs him not to do it. When Roxy wakes, her face is pressed into the carpet and her legs are up on a chair. She is hurt, and pushes herself up slowly, starting to remember what happened. The carpet is drenched in blood. Her mother is dead, and there’s a paper resting on her chest with a drawing of a primrose. Roxy is 14 years old. She’s “one of the youngest, and one of the first.”
Like Allie’s own experience with abuse a few chapters later, this act of violence will become seminal for Roxy going forward. The knowledge of what it is like to be abused by men helps to inform both characters’ desire for safety, and how they view gaining power as a means to achieve that safety at nearly any cost.
Themes
