The Power of One

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses child abuse as well as racist violence and language.

“This is what happened. Before my life started properly, I was doing the usual mewling and sucking, which in my case occurred on a pair of huge soft, black breasts.”

This quotation illustrates that the novel is written as a reflection upon the narrator’s life. The narrator sometimes uses a reflective perspective that is more mature and sometimes highlights the less knowledgeable and naive perspective of a child.

“I was the youngest child in the school by two years, and I spoke only English, the infected tongue that had spread like a plague into the sacred land and contaminated the pure, sweet waters of Afrikanerdom.”

The narrator uses an ironic metaphor and simile to emphasize the importance of race relations to the novel, comparing himself to a germ and the British people in South Africa to a sickness that contaminates the health of the nation. This illustrates Peekay’s perception of himself as an outsider and shows how Peekay conflates the perspectives of others with his own point of view as a young child.

“I had learned that crying is luxury good adapters have to forgo.”

As part of the novel’s thematic exploration of Adaptation, Evolution, and the Science of Survival, Peekay frequently mentions different lessons that he learns at the Afrikaans boarding school that he uses to adapt his behavior to fit in and survive the continuous abuse that he suffers. Bryce Courtenay mobilizes the double meaning of the word “adapters,” used to refer to a cultural behavior as well as evolution and biological traits.