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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Power, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power and Violence
Corruption
Gender Reversals and Sexism
Stories, History, and Perspective
Religion and Manipulation
Revolution and Social Change
Summary
Analysis
Author Neil Adam Armon writes a letter to a fellow writer named Naomi Alderman, explaining that he has finished his book and asking her to read it. He explains that the book is “not quite history, not quite a novel,” but that it represents what archeologists believe is “the most plausible narrative.” He wonders if it’s too shocking, particularly the parts about Mother Eve. He apologizes for going on and on, and thanks her profusely for sparing the time to read it.
Neil is an analogue for Alderman herself, as his name is an anagram hers. The dynamic explored between them shows a mirrored version of typical gender dynamics, hinting at the way in which their world is different from today’s society. Posing The Power as a book within a book also immediately calls attention to the importance of how a story is told.
Themes
In Naomi’s response to Neil, she writes that she’s been scanning through the pages and is “practically on the edge of [her] seat” to read the scenes with male soldiers, male police officers, and boy crime gangs. She says reading it will be a welcome relief from her own book, and concludes that she believes she’d enjoy the “world run by men” he’s been describing—that it would surely be a “kinder, more caring and […] more sexy world than the one [they] live in.”
Naomi’s response also foreshadows the reversed power structure, as she treats male soldiers and police officers are atypical. Naomi’s assertion about a world run by men also connects to Alderman’s interrogation of the idea that a world run by women would perhaps be a gentler place—an idea which she explicitly refutes in the rest of the book.
Themes
