52 pages • 1 hour read
Bryce CourtenayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses child abuse as well as racist violence and language.
The novel is fictional but takes place amidst the historical backdrop of South Africa during a period of social upheaval not long after the Second Boer War, including World War II and preceding the institution of Apartheid, three events with major repercussions for race relations in South Africa. While Apartheid may not appear to be the central focus of the novel, the author contextualizes the Bildungsroman so that Peekay’s narrative journey—his transition from child to young adult—parallels the slow transition of South Africa toward Apartheid, the institutional oppression of Black Africans. This technique, as well as multiple characters’ criticism of recorded history, suggests that the truth about racism and racial violence in pre-Apartheid and Apartheid South Africa need to be revealed through lens of a fictional character. The author uses Peekay’s youthful, naïve perspective to reflect upon the arbitrary and illogical hatred of the period.
Peekay’s experiences and encounters with different characters contextualize the dynamics of the social and racial hierarchy in South Africa. These characters from different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and backgrounds provide him with multiple perspectives. For example, the influence of Peekay’s Nanny and Inkosi-Inkosikazi develops his familiarity with and esteem for Black Africans and African tribal culture that is mostly unique among white characters in the novel. Peekay also befriends Doc (a German), Geel Piet (a “Cape Colored” man), Morrie (a Jewish person), and Rasputin (a Russian), deeply valuing each friendship and perspective. At the same time, many of these characters also demonstrate some form of prejudice. Hoppie Groenewald is patient and kind with Peekay, but also demonstrates casual racism when he explains that his boxing idol, Joe Louis “is a black man” but insists that he is “not a kaffir like our kaffirs, black yes, but not stupid and dirty and ignorant” (83). Bryce Courtenay hence explores the specificity of racism in South Africa compared with the different context of America that that allowed the slow encroachment of Apartheid.
Courtenay marks Peekay as an often reluctant symbol of a unified South Africa. Peekay’s fight with Gideon Mandoma highlights the institution of Apartheid and encourages Peekay to take up his symbolic significance even as his inability to keep tutoring Black people at the Prince of Wales school reveals his powerlessness against the regime. In the end, Peekay’s triumph over the Judge at the conclusion of the novel is a symbolic victory for “Onoshobishobi Ingelosi” with little impact upon Apartheid; however, it does provide a hopeful ending that gestures toward an end of Apartheid. Courtenay’s selection of a white protagonist as the heroic figure for racial injustice reproduces racist hierarchies that privilege white perspectives.
Peekay is a precocious character, and the narrator’s voice is observational to the point of scientific. This, alongside Peekay’s preoccupation with “camouflage,” establishes the novel’s thematic ideas about adapting in order to survive. Since the novel is a Bildungsroman, this theme is both conceptual and structural.
Doc is the central character within this theme, mentoring Peekay and acting as his main source of education in Barberton. Doc is a symbol of scientific observation. Peekay often refers to his surroundings as “landscape” (23), alluding to Doc and his influence. Geel Piet utilizes observation in a different way and adapts to survive the system in Barberton prison. While Doc forces Peekay to promise not to hide his intelligence, encouraging Peekay to strive for excellence in order to live, Geel Piet is associated with Peekay’s instinctive understanding of the world and the need to “camouflage” and hide to survive. Geel Piet fits alongside Doc within this theme, a secondary influence who alludes to adaptation and evolution as a set of survival skills with which Peekay sympathizes but ultimately outgrows.
This theme reflects the genre of the novel. As a Bildungsroman, the story follows Peekay’s growth and development, emphasizing the evolution of his character. Book 1 tells the story of Peekay’s childhood as he adapts to overcome the initial trauma of his time in the Afrikaans boarding school. He places the emphasis on hiding and surviving. Book 2 tells the story of Peekay’s time in the Prince of Wales school at Johannesburg. Peekay is true to his promise to Doc to shine. This section concludes with Peekay’s unnerving self-discovery that he has adapted for so long and so well that he is unsure of who controls his life: the people he loves or himself. Book 3 tells the story of Peekay’s transformation, when he comes into his own and faces the Judge in a final battle to overcome his past and survive.
As indicated by the title, this novel highlights the power of the individual, which the narrator describes as “a flame of independence” (20). More specifically, it explains the power of Peekay. Discovering “The Power of One” is the basis of Peekay’s character development.
Peekay’s power as an individual also relates to his status as a symbol of hope for the end of Apartheid. Peekay explains what “The Power of One” means: “one idea, one heart, one mind, one plan, one determination” (103). This maxim is an ideology that reflects Peekay as the intellectual side of this equation while he becomes the heart of Africa as “Onoshobishobi Ingelosi.” This highlights an important distinction within the novel, however. Peekay can only win for “the People” because he has no power to enact institutional change. When the Black Africans chant, “He will win, he will win, he will win for the People, Onoshobishobi Ingelosi” (355), they recognize that Peekay wins in place of the People who continue to suffer the oppression of racism and Apartheid. Courtenay therefore emphasizes the power but also the limitations of the individual within socio-political systems.
Peekay has several moments of epiphany throughout the novel that represent his transition from a fractured sense of self to a sense of individual power. Traumatized by the Judge, Peekay references his split consciousness as a method to cope with the abuse that he suffers, explaining that he “had learned to be in two places at once” (45). He adds that “part of [his] mind would visit Inkosi-Inkosikazi” during the Judge’s abuse (45). The division that he creates separates the character, Peekay, from “Onoshobishobi Ingelosi,” a figure of strength. This means that as a Bildungsroman, the journey Peekay embarks upon to achieve “The Power of One” is a journey of healing as well as growth and development.