The Power of One is a novel written by the well-known author, Bryce Courtenay. The story is set in Africa in the early to mid-1900s with World War 2, racism and fascism political era. The story is told through the main character Peekay, an English boy sent to Afrikaans boarding school at the age of five with his observations and survival in the system at that time. His goal is to become the welterweight boxing champion of the world and those that influence his life growing up in South Africa. A key relationship in this novel was Peekay’s and Doc’s. This relationship helped me understand Peekay because Doc shaped Peekay into the person he is and the things he did and thought while growing up. The relationship between Doc and Peekay helps me to understand the importance of logic.
Doc teaches Peekay how to think logically and teaches him a lot about life and caring for people no matter what. ‘Inside all people, there is love, also the need to take care of the other man who is his brother.’ Doc does this by being Peekays teacher and teaching him everything there is to know about the outdoors and music but especially to think logically. He teaches him about being kind to everyone even if they are different and have a different race and religion because there is so much hate in the world ‘When man is brutalised in such a place like this always he is looking for small signs. The smallest sign that someone is worried about him is like a fire on the dark mountain.’
Doc was a big part in how Peekay found The Power of One inside himself. The power inside of him and what he can achieve and do even if everyone around Peekay is being negative or putting other people down. Even when everyone is racist he can still find The Power of One inside himself to do the right thing and the better thing. Doc taught Peekay The Power of One and how he could believe in himself more than anything else no matter what. ‘Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention.’ Peekay had really released when he truly found the power inside of him when…‘The pain in my body had somehow sharpened the focus of my mind, I saw South Africa. I saw what would come. Something had happened to me’.
Doc’s and Peekay’s relationship helped me understand the need for hope and persistence. Peekay is so determined to be the welterweight champion and he is doing anything he can to get himself to that point and never gives up and knows there is hope. “My mind was permanently focused on a single fixed point, the welterweight championship of the world. I thought about it so often, reaffirmed my determination so frequently, that hardly an hour of my life passed when it wasn’t in my thoughts.”. Peekay always went back to this saying that Hoppie thought him ‘First with the head and then with the heart.’ This helped him a lot through his boxing. Even if something that seems impossible he will make it possible. Peekay had found his hope from when he was falling and Hoppie gave him a hand and right from that moment he knew there was hope and by Peekay doing things like helping the prison with letters and tobacco he gave them hope. So he was giving hope.
In conclusion, Bryce Courtenay shows that in the novel “The Power of One” the reader that the relationship between Peekay and Doc is very special and he helps Peekay through a lot and shows him everything life has to offer through hope and The Power of One. It makes me think about in life that there will always be hard times but you need to find the strength and power inside of yourself to get through that stage and good will come from it.
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