The Power of One

No stranger to the injustice of racial hatred, five-year-old Peekay learns the hard way the first secret of survival and self-preservation - the power of one. An encounter with amateur boxer Hoppie Groenewald inspires in Peekay a fiery ambition - to be welterweight champion of the world.

The Power of One Cheat Sheet

The Power of One is a bildungsroman or coming of age story. That means it is part of a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), and in which, character change is extremely important. Peekay starts the novel as a 5 year old boy and ends it as a 17 year old ‘chief’.

Key themes in The Power of One

• Good vs evil
• The power of one
• Magic and logic
• Friendship
• Apartheid (prejudice and the fight for equality)
• Boxing and fighting

Key symbols in The Power of One

• The moon
• The snake
• Onoshobishobi Ingelosi (The Tadpole Angel)

Key motifs in The Power of One

• African osmosis
• The loneliness birds
• Fairy tales
• The moon
• The snake

Archetypes in the novel: Hero. Mentor. Shadow. Ally.