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Chapter 15
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
After receiving the tip from Tatiana Moskalev, Tunde had found a group of men training with suits of rubber, battery packs on their backs, and electric cattle prods in their hands. With six photographs, Tunde proved that Awadi-Atif was working with the Moldovan Defense Forces and made world news.
The defense forces that Awadi-Atif builds serve as another example of the resistance the men display to the shifts of power, and why it creates the necessity for women to answer with large-scale protests, violence, and revolution.
Themes
Tunde then travels to Delhi, where riots have begun under the motorway bridges: “the place men come when they want a woman they can use without law or license, discard without censure.” The women pass the power for three years, which they believe comes from Kali (the Hindu goddess of death).
Again, up until the development of the power, the sexual violation and oppression of women have essentially been normalized. Additionally, as Eve previously suggested, these women relate their power to religious figures, manipulating their beliefs to fit a narrative of why they have gained the power.
Themes
When the riot starts, the government sends in the army, but the women quickly learn the trick of splashing water on their attackers and electrifying it. The government then cuts off the water supply, but after three days, the sky sends an unseasonal rainstorm. Women light up the roadways, killing the soldiers suddenly.
The government’s actions demonstrate how the present government run by men is just as susceptible to corruption as the eventual government run by women. In response to the women’s actions, they choose to starve the entire city of water rather than risk being hurt.
Themes
Tunde follows the women’s protests in the markets. Prior to this, women could not walk alone in the market. Now women are making a “show of force” in solidarity with those who were killed under the bridges. Tunde interviews a woman who explains: “The only wave that changes anything is a tsunami.” She tells him that now the men will be the ones who should not walk out of their houses alone at night and who should be afraid.
The interview with this woman in Delhi makes two of Alderman’s arguments explicitly: first, that a “tsunami” is required to make any change. A small wave, the woman indicates, will not make a difference. The second argument is about the reversal of gender dynamics, as the woman declares that men will now be the fearful ones; men will not be able to walk alone—in contrast to how it had been.
Themes
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The crowd thickens. Tunde climbs onto the roof of a building for a better view. He lands in a puddle on the roof. A woman is sitting on the roof as well; it appears to him that “there is something wrong with her.” She puts her finger into the puddle of water Tunde is sitting in and shocks him. The pain is instant: he pleads with her to stop. She starts to laugh at him, and he becomes afraid. He crawls out of the water but is unable to stand up.
This is the first moment in which Alderman demonstrates how the power is truly corrosive. Up to this point, only men who have perpetrated injustice against women have been harmed. But Tunde is trying to help the women, and yet this woman still hurts him. This hints at what Tunde understands later: she is trying to hurt him simply because she can.
Themes
The woman lunges for Tunde; when he tries to kick she grabs his ankle and gives him another jolt. She wrestles with his belt and jeans, trying to pull them down. He worries that if he fights back too hard, she’ll knock him unconscious and do whatever she wants to him. Just then, three other women pull the first woman off of Tunde and shock her over and over. Tunde pulls his pants back up and watches until the woman stops moving completely.
This incident is also the first in which the gender reversal plays out through sexual assault. Now men are forced to imagine what it might be like to need both protection from women and the protection of women. It is this incident that truly forces Tunde to reckon with the fact that his fate going forward may largely be outside his own hands.
Themes
