The Power of One

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In The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, the main character, Peekay, faces many challenges and difficulties in his early life, most of them being very dangerous to himself. Peekay could have given up and simply keeled over early on in his life, but he stayed strong all the way through. There are three main sequences of challenges displayed in the novel in which Peekay faces and shows just how strong the power of one can be. The first challenge Peekay faces in The Power of One is being sent to boarding school because of his mother’s frail state of mind at the time. Peekay becomes the only person in the whole school that was British and didn’t speak the language that every other kid spoke. He gets beaten up by the Judge and the jury who are the older kids at school and earns the name Pisskop until Harry Crown, a shop owner, renames him Peekay. Peekay also suffers from bed wetting and gets beaten every morning by Mevrou. During the holidays, Peekay goes back home and tells his nanny about his bed wetting problem, Nanny gets a spiritual doctor to come cure his bed wetting problem. The spiritual doctor gives Peekay a chicken that he names Grandpa Chook as a parting gift. When Peekay returns to school with Grandpa Chook, the Judge and the jury keep Peekay as prisoner for Adolf Hitler, and when Grandpa Chook tries to interfere, the Judge kills the chicken and Peekay is devastated. “Kill me but don’t kill Grandpa Chook!” (Courtenay 45). Being at the boarding school was a significant challenge for Peekay because of the entirety of what he had to put up with in that segment of his early childhood. It shows you that even the youngest and not yet mature of all beings can have the power as one to stay strong through hard times. When Peekay returns home from boarding school, instead of seeing his nanny waiting for him, he sees another bump in the road awaiting him, his mother.

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