Blog Entry 2

Blog 2

It is important to realise where Bryce Courtenay is coming from. He bases this book loosely on his own life experiences, things such as being bullied when he went to boarding school, learning how to box and the fact that Peekay’s life take place at roughly the same time as Courtenay’s.  When reading this book you have to remember that almost everything in this book Courtenay can relate to. It is a sort of fake autobiography. This is called a bildungsroman. By doing this, making the story based on his own life, it would have been easier for him to write because he had actually had those things happen to him and when he writes it all down, he writes as if he was there; which in fact he sort of was. Everything he writes can be written down with detailed accuracy and with an uncanny and striking depth that seems to penetrate your head. The popularity and the appeal of this novel is very much based on the author. The fact that he is a very distinguished writer will make his work even more noticed. The appeal of the novel itself is great! I honestly found it to be interesting and almost addictively gripping. Although in some parts (mainly the mining part) he seems to drag on with details for a bit too long, I find that this book is really well written. I have also looked on the internet to find some reviews and the responses to this book have been very positive. The most negative part of this book that I find is the offensive language. Most of this is very unnecessary and some of it completely uncalled for. The age that this book is intended for is obviously not for youngsters. First of all it is a rather large book, secondly it goes into detail about a lot of things such as Peekay’s private parts and his puberty and also with some terms and symbols such as the loneliness birds and the boxing terminology. In addition to this there is also a fair bit of abusive language that is used. I find that the intended audience would be from the ages fourteen or fifteen and up. There is also the fact that this book isn’t really aimed at Christians, it is a worldly book and worldly speaking it is a fantastic book, however we must remember that we have to compare what it says to Scripture and this often clashes with the book. This is where we must take a step back and realise that Peekay is not a Christian, and obviously Courtenay isn’t either, or else he wouldn’t have written a book with such offensive language. 

Blog Entry 8

Blog 8

The author of The Power of One Bryce Courtenay represents many different characters in his book, among which there are the adults and children. By writing about this boy Peekay, Courtenay also puts forward attitudes, values and beliefs. The adults in the book are all different. Some are kind and help Peekay, such as Doc, Klipkop and Hoppie. I also noticed that the adults, who are nice towards Peekay, are not perfect. Take Hoppie for instance; when he takes Peekay to get some new shoes, Hoppie treats the Indians who own the shop like they are dirt. I find this a bit different. It makes it more realistic because these ‘good’ people are not shown as perfect. Then there are also the children that Courtenay represents. Firstly there is Peekay the protagonist of the book. He aspires to be the champion welterweight boxer and follows his dream throughout the whole book. Whatever comes up he seems to push through. He is bullied and made fun of by some, but also loved and cherished by others. Everywhere he goes things seem to go his way and everything works out. He started off with nothing as a child and ends up going to Oxford University. On the other hand there is the Judge. He picks on Peekay and bullies him because he is a Rooinek. However, from what we can see from the Judge, he started in a position of power and ended up loosing everything. He ends up getting beaten by Peekay, his arm is mutilated and he is unfit with a large gut at the age of twenty five! What I believe Courtenay is trying to put forward here is the fact that kids have dreams and you should be careful of what you do with those dreams. If you nurture them, anything can happen. On the other hand if you put them down and try to force them to do something they don’t want to do, they may turn on you later in life. There is also the theme that is already given in the title: The Power of One. There is an independent spirit within every person and if they fuel that spark, it will become a raging fire and anything is possible. Peekay’s attitude that is shown throughout the entire book is one of determination. However we must also remember that when we read this book, Peekay is a very unchristian person. He hates the Lord it seems, with all his might. His attitude towards God is completely heathen and very offensive. Instead, Peekay believes in the power of himself; the power of one. This is a very humanistic point of view. We must always remember that whatever we do, we cannot do without the will of God. He is the one in control of our lives, not us, insignificant human beings.

Blog Entry 7

Blog 7

Peekay is a very special kind of character. He has a different personality and I find that his boxing name that was given to him while he boxed for Klipkop and the Barberton Blues, ‘Gentleman Peekay’. Peekay was the alternative name for Pisskop and ‘Gentleman’ showed his upbringing. He was a tortured boy and yet he didn’t seem to want to lash out at anyone in anger. Instead he was a gentleman. Another thing about Peekay is his way of describing things, although we know it is not Peekay describing these things. He has a unique style of saying things. An excellent example of this is whenever he is on the train. Usually people like you and me hear the constant clickity clack of the rails, but not Peekay, he hears Hoppie’s voice whispering in his ear ‘first with the head, then with the heart’. Another more crude example is when he reaches a certain part of puberty and he is hit with the ‘sex lightning’. It is also his style of writing throughout the book. The words seem to grow with age, just like Peekay does. The older Peekay gets in the book, the more mature the words sound when he is ‘writing’ them. Just little things like this, him describing them like that, it is like those exact words were in the back of my mind but the way Peekay says it is like a new style of vocabulary has sprung to my mind. Another thing I find special about Peekay is his willingness to learn. He listens and has the incredible gift of being able to remember everything. He soaks up everything he is told. I find it quite hilarious that the first idea that someone tells him positively becomes his dream. Hoppie tells Peekay that he is going to become the world’s greatest welterweight champion for boxing, and this is when Peekay is only six years old. This is his dream throughout his whole life. It just goes to show that any amount of positive feedback or input can change a child’s life forever. Another thing about Peekay is his determination. He seems to have this steely look on life and he grits his teeth and takes whatever is thrown at him. His life is much like his boxing career.  I just find that the way whole book is intertwined is fascinating, how he always finds ways to overcome the impossible. The language conventions that Bryce Courtenay uses to describe Peekay are different but effective. Some places things are spelt wrong or things are described in a child’s way, just to show the naivety of Peekay. 

Blog Entry 6

Blog 6

Genre · Bildungsroman, popular sports fiction, adventure novel

Narrator · The Power of One is narrated by Peekay. Peekay narrates from some point in the future, as an adult looking back on his early childhood and youth.

Point of view · Peekay recounts in the first person, allowing only the reader into his thoughts and feelings. In such a way, the novel often breaks into Peekay’s immediate thoughts on the situation as he ‘trusts’ the reader with the reflections and questions spinning through his mind. Peekay's detailed commentary on the boxing games gives the novel a third person quality at times. Very rarely the novel takes on a letter style of writing through the addition of letters to Peekay from various characters.

Tone · Peekay's tone towards his younger self is mildly ironic as he laughs at his early misunderstandings and errors about the world. As he describes the events of his youth, later in the book, Peekay’s tone becomes less forgiving and he describes the disasters and embarrassments of his young manhood with serious detachment at times.

Setting (Time) · Roughly 1939 to 1951, the World War II period and the beginning of the apartheid period in South Africa

Setting (Place) · South Africa and Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe)

Major conflict · After suffering from a difficult childhood in an Afrikaans boarding school, Peekay struggles during the course of the novel to discover and keep within himself what he refers to as The Power of One, that is, the independence of spirit that allows one to survive any situation, regardless of how hostile the given situation is.

Ascending achievement(s) · Peekay's anger at the Judge for killing his chicken Granpa Chook, Hoppie Groenewald's introducing Peekay to boxing, Peekay's boxing matches throughout the novel - all of which he wins, Geel Piet's death, Doc's death, Peekay's loss of the Rhodes scholarship, Peekay's near-death accident in the mines

Climax · The climax arrives only at the very end of the novel, when seventeen-year-old Peekay comes face-to-face with his childhood nemesis, Jaapie Botha - or simply "the Judge." Botha, who has become temporarily insane from what the miners call a "powderheadache," searches for Peekay in the miners' bar, swearing to kill him.

Dropping action · In the fight of his life, Peekay retaliates and wins - he leaves  the Judge lying in a pool of blood and vomit on the floor, having carved a Union Jack and his initials over the Judge’s swastika tattoo. He has avenged Granpa Chook. He leaves the bar to discover that the loneliness birds, which have always haunted him since his childhood, have gone.

Themes · The slow poison of apartheid, the importance of camouflage for survival, the necessary coexistence of logic and magic, the complicated relationship between boxing or indeed any sport and life.

Blog Entry 5

Blog 5

All throughout the book written by Bryce Courtenay The Power of One I kept reading about these symbols like the Nazi Swastika, the union Jack, the three waterfalls, the snake, the loneliness birds and the African term osmosis or the Tadpole Angel. All of these symbols had a different meaning and significance. These symbols are used in different situations to show us new things or to show us a different perspective on a situation.

The first symbol I mentioned was the Nazi Swastika. Most of us know what this was. It was a cross type symbol and Hitler used it to show their anti-Semitism or hate towards the Jews. In the book we read that Judge and the Jury all love Hitler. They look at him and the Germans as a saviour because he was supposed to get rid of all of the Rooineks in South Africa. They were going to come and march them all off of the cliff into the sea.  The Judge got a tattoo of the Swastika on his arm and this was a sign of his naivetés. He didn’t really know what Hitler was going to do, he didn’t realise that he would just as soon kill all of the Afrikaners. The Judge didn’t realise that Hitler was after the Jews. At the end of the book Peekay mutilates the Judge’s swastika by carving into his arm a union jack. The swastika could go away; one could scrape a tattoo off, even if it was painful. However, it was possible, but the scar that would be left by Peekay would be unfixable. This was a sign of Peekay’s final stand against his aggressors. Bryce Courtenay uses very graphic language to get his point across but there it is Peekay’s rebellion against the false ‘deity’ so to speak.

The third symbol was the three waterfalls. I didn’t find much about this topic, but I did find that in the book, Peekay returns home after his first year of school and his nanny commands the famous black chief Inkosi-Inkosikazi to solve Peekay's bed-wetting problem. Not only does Inkosi-Inkosikazi manage this, but he also opens Peekay's mind to a special place of "dreaming", a place of three waterfalls and ten stones, where Peekay may always find him. This could be Peekay’s sort of happy place, a place where he could go to take control of his ‘Zen’ so to speak.

The next symbol was the snake. First of all is his ‘hatless snake’. Now we all know that this referred to his circumcision and this was a source of shame to him. It set him apart from all of the other white boy’s. That is how they found out that he was a Rooinek. They tortured him as a result. The next snake we hear of is the one that Granpa Chook kills. Granpa Chook bites off the head of this snake and Peekay uses this as a sort of comfort because he is not the only one with a ‘headless snake’ anymore. These, however, are literal. Later on in the book the snake turns into a symbolic status. Starting in chapter eighteen, Peekay uses the symbol of the snake by applying the analogy of shedding his outer skin, similar to the snake. He conquers his earlier embarrassment of his ‘hatless snake’. Now, instead of feeling vulnerable, he comes to accept himself as he is. At the end of the book, while he has his mining job, he has a dream or ‘vision’ of the black mamba snake, the dream sign from Doc. This seemingly cautions Peekay of his disastrous incident with the running fuse and this dream saves his life.

After this there are the loneliness birds. These birds are Peekay’s childhood idea and their name describes what they are. They need no introduction. They are spread throughout the story but always happen to be mentioned when he is suffering from abuse and feels alone. Peekay finally gets rid of these loneliness birds when he beats the Judge to a pulp and mutilates his arm.

The last symbol is the Tadpole Angel. This is something that only the black people in the book seem to have. They can somehow transmit information through this Tadpole Angel. The Tadpole Angel is a symbol of hope and the black people along with the outsiders in the Prince of Wales school compare Peekay to the Tadpole Angel. This is because he is a symbol of hope; he does what others don’t dare and he succeeds.

Blog Entry 4

Blog 4

Racism. I have spent quite a while this year looking at racism from different texts and now again through this book, The Power of One. This theme comes through fairly strong and Bryce Courtenay portrays some of it very graphically and somewhat extraordinarily. There are all types of racism in this book, including apartheid, which I will focus on most, the anti-Semitism showed by the Nazis and the hate shown towards the English South Africans or Rooineks by the Afrikaners. In the 1930’s and 1950’s there was a lot of racism still from the Boer Wars. First of all there was the tension between the Boers and the British. This, as already stated, originated from the Boer war. Things were still uneasy between the Rooineks and the Afrikaners. The sons, especially the Afrikaner veterans of the Boer War, were taught to make the Rooineks to pay at every single chance possible. This party was mainly represented by Judge and the Jury in the book. Peekay copped a lot of shit, literally, and was even pissed on at one stage by the Afrikaner boys in his school. There was also the racism between the whites and the blacks, or the ‘kaffirs’ as they were referred to. The word kaffir in literal English means heathen, and was a very derogatory term back then, as it still is now. People get killed for calling black people kaffirs. The black were treated like dirt by all of the white people, Rooinek and Afrikaner alike. The hatred went both ways because the whites had taken everything away from the natives. This was shown in the book The Power of One especially with Geel Piet. Geel Piet is a coloured man who works in the Barberton prison where Peekay starts to actually learn how to box. Geel Piet is Peekay’s personal boxing trainer and develops a close relationship with both Peekay and Doc, who is also an occupant of the prison, and Peekay’s piano teacher. Geel Piet is brutally treated by the warder at the prison, Borman, and eventually is heartlessly murdered by him. He is also forced to say that he and his kind eat their own excrement. This may have actually been true, because in the concentration camps they were starving. The hurt could have only been on the outside if this was not true, but if it was true that they resorted to eating faecal matter in the concentration camps, this insult would bring back horrible memories and cut deep into their consciences.

Blog Entry 3

Blog 3

Throughout the whole book but especially near the beginning there are a lot of references to the Boer War. Peekay is subject to persecution because of this conflict. The Anglo-Boer War, more commonly known as the Second Boer War was fought between the British Empire and the Afrikaners, (the Dutch speaking settlers in South Africa). The Boer War started in 1899 and ended in 1902. The Boers were the Dutch settlers in South Africa who held on tightly to their mother language and created a ‘new’ dialect calling it Afrikaans. In 1871 they discovered diamonds in Kimberley, prompting a diamond rush and a flood of foreigners came in, pretty much invading South Africa. Gold was also found in the Republic of South Africa and another wave of fortune seekers came. Basically what happened was that the settlers that lived in Kimberly and the Republic were mostly the Dutch speaking Afrikaners and they became known as the Boers. They were excellent fighters and exceptional with a rifle. On the other hand there were the British or the Rooineks which is translated because they would get burnt necks because their helmets and coats did not cover their necks. This war was a war for land between skill and numbers. The skill going to the Afrikaners and the numbers going to the Rooineks. However the one thing that really tore up the Boers was the fact that they were fighting against their fellow Christians and this unsettled them. The numbers of the Boers were between 35,000 and 43,000 whereas the British ended up getting around 250,000 men. Everyone knew back then, how the British fought and won their wars, they lined up their men and shot at each other. The only reason the British would win was because of sheer numbers and the Boers realised this. To turn the tide in their favour they resorted to something called guerrilla warfare, which was basically where they would hide in the bush and pop out unexpectedly, cut down the unaware Rooineks and disappear before the Rooineks could regroup and mount a successful offensive. This caused a lot of problems for the British as you can imagine so the British pretty much lay siege to the individual towns, cutting off communications with others, cutting off supplies of food and especially fresh water and ammunition. In the end the groups of Boers surrendered because they could no longer sustain themselves. Group by group the British took the Boers and put them into concentration camps, treating them cruelly. It is believed that around 26,000 men women and children died of starvation and unhygienic conditions in these camps. This is the background to Pisskop’s torture sessions with the Judge and the Jury. They were taking out all the wrong which had happened to their parents onto the next generation.