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.