Essay Questions

Naomi Alderman in The Power explores how power corrupts those in positions of advantage. Support this statement using illustrations from the novel.

Naomi Alderman while she tries to explore the issue of balance of power between men and women, also brings out how power tends to lead to the corruption of a people. As the novel begins, the women are depicted as using violence to protect themselves from situations which necessitate the use of the same. However, as the novel progresses with women getting more power, it begins to corrupt and interfere with their morals. They, therefore, begin to use violence for their selfish gains rather than to exert justice.

For instance, after Allie goes away, she becomes convinced that she can only be at peace if she owns the whole place. As such, when she goes over to a convent, she changes her name to a new one and begins to act like a preacher. After one of the nuns becomes cynical of her religious proclamations, Allie now Eve, kills her. Even though the religion is thought to be a way of bringing peace to the people, Allie who is at its center is motivated by the desire to get rid of any doubtful individuals or those that are unyielding of her ideas and teachings.

Violence appears as one of the major themes explored in Alderman’s The Power. Support this statement.

Violence is brought to light in The Passion beginning with the occasion of the intruders who break into Roxy’s house wielding knives at the two. The two men threaten Roxy and her mother until they beat her mother up to death. Additionally, Allie, a teen living in Alabama, suffers a lot of violence and oppression in the hands of his father. Allie’s foster father rapes her, calling her a whore for having encouraged the attack that she had suffered from the boys. Alderman uses this violence inflicted upon the women by the men to show how the situation had been before the women received their electrostatic power. Additionally, after the power, women are also depicted to exert violence on others for their gain. In particular, Allie kills a nun who becomes doubtful of the religious message that she preaches.