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
Roxy has seen her dad Bernie (a drug kingpin) hit other men before, and she thinks about how she’s always wanted the power to hurt people like he has. A year after Roxy’s mother’s death, Bernie tells Roxy that he and Roxy’s half-brothers (Terry, Ricky, and Darrell) are ready to get revenge on Primrose for the murder. Roxy shows them what she can do—first, by giving them a dead arm, and second, by putting her hand in her stepmother Barbara’s pond and electrocuting all of the fish in it. Bernie is pleased.
Even before gaining her own power, Roxy understood from her father’s interactions with others that an individual’s ability to hurt other people has a direct correlation with their ability to gain power. Her father is widely feared, and it is due to the ability she describes here.
Themes
Though only 15 years old, Roxy has a lot of power—more than any other girl they can find for her to practice with. And that’s why Bernie lets Roxy come along to deal with Primrose. When they leave, Ricky gives Roxy some cocaine to clear her head. Once they arrive at a warehouse where they know Primrose is going to be, Roxy watches from upstairs through a grate in the floor while her brothers and father do the job.
Roxy’s taking of cocaine foreshadows the eventual prominence of Glitter—a drug that enhances women’s power. Its creation eventually adds to the corruption of the power, as it only leads her (and others) to desire more and more power.
Themes
When Bernie and his men start to fire their guns, twenty of Primrose’s men come out and fire back. Terry is killed. Roxy watches in horror as a shot hits Bernie in the side. Realizing she can do something, Roxy electrifies the iron walkway she’s standing on, which trails down to a set of rails that some of Primrose’s men are leaning on. Three of them cry out in fits. She then electrocutes two men who chase her.
Alderman continues to explore women’s discoveries of the various ways in which their power can be used, and the various means of hurting people. Not only does anything metal become a weapon, but eventually water becomes a weapon as well, as was previously hinted at when Roxy electrocuted the fish in the pond.
Themes
Roxy watches as Primrose tries to escape. She runs after him, and catches up to him as he struggles against a locked door. She slides into him, grabbing his ankle and electrifying him several times. He screams. He realizes who Roxy’s mother is and apologizes that she saw it happen: he tells her that Newland said she wasn’t going to be home. He begs her to spare him. Roxy thinks of her mother begging, and she thinks of her father hitting other men. She puts her hand to Primrose’s temple and kills him.
Roxy’s thinking of her father in this moment provides a parallel with her thoughts at the beginning of the chapter. Just like her father, Roxy’s ability to hurt and kill inspires both fear and power. The irony, of course, is that even her father and brothers eventually fear and covet this same power, to the point where they hurt Roxy in order to gain it.
Themes
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