52 pages • 1 hour read
Bryce CourtenayThe Power of One
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1, Chapters 1-3 Summary
Content Warning: The source material features depictions of child abuse as well as racist violence and bigoted language. Additionally, the source material uses South African racial slurs for Black South Africans and South Africans with British ancestry. These epithets are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.
On his Granpa’s chicken farm in the Natal Province of South Africa, Peekay’s mother has a mental health crisis. At five years old, Peekay is sent away from his beloved Zulu Nanny to an Afrikaans boarding school where he is the only English-speaking student, and he is the youngest by two years.
Peekay misunderstands the situations in which he finds himself and uses his own descriptions to make sense of events. Two 11-year-old students grab Peekay and take him to “stand trial” before another student whom Peekay calls the “Judge” and his “council of war.” The Judge and the other boys pee on Peekay and give him the name “Pisskop” or “Pisshead.”
The abuse causes Peekay to wet the bed. He is mocked and shamed by the boys in the dorm and caned by Mevrou, the head teacher. The bedwetting continues, and every day for a year Peekay is systematically abused by the much older boys and punished by Mevrou. Peekay adopts “camouflage” to cope, hiding his intelligence and seeking to blend in with the other boys.
Peekay leaves for the summer and returns to his Nanny who has arranged for the Zulu Medicine Man, Inkosi-Inkosikazi, to see Peekay and cure his bedwetting. Inkosi-Inkosikazi visits his dreams and takes Peekay to a rocky place with waterfalls that he calls the “night country.” He makes Peekay an honorary Zulu, calling him a “little warrior of the king,” and teaches him a “trick of the sleeping chicken” before giving him a rooster to practice on that Peekay names Granpa Chook (16). The chicken follows Peekay everywhere, and Peekay forms a close attachment to Granpa Chook.
Summer ends and Peekay returns to school, bringing Granpa Chook with him. Peekay’s bedwetting is cured. On the first night, he is brought before the Judge again. The Judge has the cicatrized tattoo of a swastika on his shoulder that Peekay compares to a Black woman’s face tattoo. The Judge hits Peekay and explains that it is the symbol of Hitler who will march Peekay and all Englishmen into the sea. The Judge and the other boys dip their fingers in Peekay’s blood, wipe it across the Judge’s swastika tattoo, and ritualistically swear to bring death to all Englishmen and take back South Africa.
Granpa Chook wakes the boys in Peekay’s dorm the next morning. Peekay defiantly claims the rooster as his friend. Mevrou discovers Granpa Chook and canes Peekay but accepts the rooster once he kills some roaches in front of the teacher.
Peekay remains friendless and his abuse continues. He goes to the “night country” in his mind to cope with the abuse that he suffers, enraging the Judge when he fails to cry or react. The Judge makes Peekay practice marching around the playground to prepare for his march to the sea once Hitler arrives.
Peekay arranges to do the Judge’s school work to get relief. The bullying lessens and Peekay becomes the best at his subjects despite his age. He now speaks Afrikaans as well as English and the African languages of the Zulu tribes.
The Judge is able to graduate due to Peekay’s efforts; he is not grateful and instead uses his last opportunity at school to abuse Peekay. The Judge and his “jury” bind Peekay to a tree and smear feces all over him before stoning him with small stones in an execution style. When the Judge tries to make Peekay eat the feces, Granpa Chook manages to drop chicken leavings into the Judge’s mouth. Enraged, the Judge kills Granpa Chook before beating Peekay into unconsciousness.
Peekay gives Granpa Chook a burial and makes a promise to himself never to let the others see him cry.
Book 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The novel opens by providing a framework for reading the lengthy Bildungsroman that follows. The opening image is that of the narrator snatched from the arms of his Black Zulu Nanny, a character who represents the safety and security of home. This establishes race and Peekay’s journey as the dual focus of the story, instituting the themes of Race, Racism, and Power in South Africa and The Power of the Individual.
Bryce Courtenay describes Peekay’s time at school using a structural pattern that suggests that the growth his character will follow by highlighting the opposition of the narrator’s (adult Peekay) informed perspective with that of the young Peekay. The narrator describes his time at school as
a time of yellow wedges of pumpkin, burnt black and bitter at the edges; mashed potato with glassy lumps; meat aproned with gristle in the gray gravy; diced carrots; warm, wet, flatulent cabbage; beds that wet themselves in the morning; and an entirely new sensation called loneliness (3).
These descriptions of ruined food imply Peekay’s emotional state and his loss of security. The observational style at the beginning of the sentence establishes the precocious nature of the young protagonist who closely observes his surrounding in order to survive, an important aspect of the novel’s theme of Adaptation, Evolution, and the Science of Survival. Next, he observes and reflects on the effects of the foods on the body–wetting the bed. Only at the end of the passage does he connect what is happening within himself to his state of being—the “loneliness” he now feels–suggest that he has worked out his hazy, sensory memories after a lifetime of experience. This representation of the adult Peekay’s understanding and acceptance of his experiences reflects the structure of the Bildungsroman as a whole.
Chapter 1 introduces the Judge as the antagonist of the novel, a figure of hatred and violence as evidenced through his initial hazing. The Judge’s “trial” forms the inciting incident of the novel, which sets its plot in motion. Peekay’s journey through the whole novel stems from this initial moment of fear and humiliation. He also gives Peekay the name “Pisskop,” a moniker against which Peekay actively rebels throughout the novel. The Judge’s character is represented by the swastika tattoo on his shoulder, which suggests that he endorses the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Courtenay also builds his characterization through his legal moniker, an allusion to the institutionalized racial violence and oppression of Apartheid that follows soon after Hitler’s defeat.
Subsequently, Peekay’s bedwetting is the focus of Chapter 2. It demonstrates that the abuse that Peekay suffers impacts him physically and mentally. The introduction of Inkosi-Inkosikazi provides a symbolic link between Peekay and “the People” when the Medicine man gives him the moniker “little warrior of the king” and brings him to the “night country” (16). He explains the significance later, stating that “when you need me, come to the night country, I will be waiting” (16). This dream symbolizes indigenous South Africans welcoming Peekay and asking him to fight for them. Granpa Chook, as Peekay’s only friend, is the symbol of the friendship between Peekay and “the People,” the rooster suffering alongside the protagonist before the Judge kills Granpa Chook in the final passages of Chapter 3.
In Chapters 2 and 3, Courtenay adds passages that reveal the historical context that shapes the political, ethnic tensions that control Peekay’s life at his Afrikaans boarding school. For example, the narrator notes that Peekay is the only English-speaking boy and the youngest child in the school by two years. He explains that Peekay “was the first live example of the congenital hate [the Afrikaners] carried for [his] kind” (3). These moments elucidate the structures of power in contemporary South Africa that anticipate Peekay’s understanding of historic British atrocities committed against the Boers.
