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 gets a phone call from CNN the day after he posts the video. They give him $5,000 in exchange for the full video. That night, he looks for more footage. The camera makes him feel powerful. He thinks, “I’ll be the one who’ll tell the story.” He films a fight between two women in the street, and a man and a woman making love as the woman arouses the man with her power. He thinks that he might want someone to do that to him, too.
Tunde’s thoughts imply that perspective, and the ability to tell a story, are yet another branch of power. The ability to control what is seen and how people see it vital. Tunde has, in fact, already affected the revolution significantly, as his initial video has sparked girls’ recognition of their abilities, which has had a profound effect on governments and societies.
Themes
CNN pays Tunde for the other videos. He is excited, thinking that he has become a real journalist—this is his history to report. He buys cheap digital cameras and researches other places where this is happening: Pakistan, Somalia, Russia. He buys a plane ticket to Riyadh, arriving on the night of the first big riot.
The fact that these kinds of revolutions are happening in so many places implies just how widespread a revolution it is. Alderman argues in this and several other chapters that gradual change will really get societies nowhere—that this kind of enormous upheaval is necessary for true change.
Themes
The riot was sparked by the death of two girls. They had been practicing their power together, and their uncle, a religious man who saw it as devilry, beat them to death. A few neighbors saw and fought back; a dozen women turned into a hundred, which turned into a thousand. The police retreat as the riot expands, but Tunde goes right to the heart of it with his camera.
Alderman continues to demonstrate that revolution can only happen with many people enacting massive change. While men have had the power for so long (and still have enough to be able to beat women to death), incidents like these incite a massive social change because so many individuals join together.
Themes
When women notice Tunde, they are skeptical of having a man walk with them. He shows them that he is not carrying weapons. One of the women, Noor, insists that he take off his clothes to show them, laughing. He obliges, easygoing. Noor smiles and instructs him to come with them, taking his hand. She explains that in their country, women cannot hold hands with a man in the street, or drive. She takes him outside a shopping mall, where she sets a dozen cars aflame in the parking lot.
Alderman uses Noor’s descriptions to contrast and parallel with some of the laws that form in Bessapara towards the end of the book, which limit the rights of men. But while Noor’s description here feels familiar and even normal (if unjust), those later laws come across as shocking. Thus, Alderman forces readers to reflect on why readers accept this kind of injustice in today’s society.
Themes
Get the entire The Power LitChart as a printable PDF.
Tunde sees women watching from windows above, and men try to drag them from the glass. Tunde knows that “this thing is going to take the world and everything will be different and he is so glad he shouts for joy, whooping with the others among the flames.” Tunde also watches as Noor wakes up the power in an older woman, who cries tears of joy. Women liberate others being kept behind barred windows by their men, absorbing them into the crowd. One man tries to shoot at them, wounding three, but they kill him easily.
Tunde’s happiness reflects an acknowledgement that what has previously been happening is unjust, and perhaps also implies that he believes the world would be better off if women had the power, rather than men. But Alderman later refutes this idea entirely, demonstrating that power corrupts women just as easily as it corrupts men.
Themes
Near dawn, Noor leads Tunde to a friend’s empty apartment. She starts to undress him. They each admit that they have never done this before. Noor declares, “I am a free woman,” exhilarated. Tunde is “afraid, he is turned on; it is all bundled up together, as it is in his fantasies.” He lets her lead, and it feels good. When she loses control as she finishes, “she sends a jolt through his buttocks and across his pelvis and he barely feels the pain at all, so great is the delight.”
Noor and Tunde’s first sexual encounter also provides parallels with typical gender relations. Alderman shows how Tunde simply accepts the fear and pain that he has to endure as a part of sex (in contrast to today’s society, where it is sometimes expected of women to simply endure that pain). But there are also parallels in that this pain is unnecessary: avoiding it simply requires a greater degree of control on the part of the person with more power to hurt, and in flipping the genders, Alderman makes readers more aware of that issue.
Themes
The government sends men in helicopters and soldiers, but the women are more numerous. Twelve days later the government falls and the king has been assassinated. By that time, Tunde is on a plane: what has happened in Riyadh is happening across the world.
It is also interesting to note that the places in which women are the most oppressed are the places in which revolution happens the swiftest: the injustices are so great that sweeping change has always been necessary. The new ability is simply the catalyst to allow women to take power.
Themes
