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Chapter 42
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
Margot receives a phone call. Jocelyn has been found in the woods in Bessapara, barely alive and with extensive injuries. The man who killed her is dead already. Margot thinks about her daughter, who “gave her the lightning.” Margot thinks back on an incident that occurred when Jocelyn was three; Jocelyn had accidentally overturned a wasps’ nest. Margot had wrapped herself around Jocelyn and carried her to safety. Jocelyn didn’t have a scratch on her, but Margot had been stung seven times and hadn’t felt a thing. That was her job, she thinks.
Margot has a brief moment of clarity in which she recognizes how much she has been corrupted by the power, and how it has pulled her focus away from caring for her child. But despite this revelation, she sinks herself further into corruption by believing that the only way to move forward and to prevent other girls from being hurt is to ensure that they always have power.
Themes
Margot asks how they can prevent this from happening again. A voice in Margot’s head says, “You can’t get there from here.” Margot sees in her head the shape of the tree of power. It branches and re-branches, but “the old tree still stands. There is only one way, and that is to blast it entirely to pieces.”
The recurring symbol of the tree takes on a new meaning here. Margot, like Eve, understands that any remnant of the old society will prevent women from being completely dominant. The only way to ensure their power is to destroy the tree (meaning society) and rebuild it from the roots up.
Themes
