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Chapter 1
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
Neil opens his book, The Power, with an excerpt from the Book of Eve. It states that the shape of power is a tree, “root to tip, central trunk branching and rebranching.” It is the shape that lightning forms when it strikes, and this same shape, the excerpt indicates, grows within people, in nerves and blood vessels.
The excerpt being from the Book of Eve indicates another societal mirror, as a woman has apparently become the central religious figure in the world. The passage also establishes the symbol of the tree, which becomes a metaphor for how power exists within a society. A central trunk stems to smaller branches, just as having a large ability (like the electrostatic power women gain) ultimately leads to more varied forms of power in society.
Themes
The excerpt continues: power travels between people in the same branching manner as the tree: people form villages, towns, cities, and states. There are two ways for human power to flow: the first is an order from the top down. But the second, “the more inevitable,” is that the people change, sending a new message back to the top. “When the people change, the palace cannot hold.” The excerpt concludes, “She cuppeth the lightning in her hand. She commandeth it to strike.”
This section of the excerpt foreshadows Alderman’s argument about social change: that revolution (like the bottom up flow of power described here), not gradual adjustments, is necessary in order for society to really change. The final quoted line also indicates how Eve and her followers repurposed old ideas in Scripture to suit their own narrative, as these two lines are adaptations of the Bible passage Job 36:32.
Themes
