Question: Describe at least one memorable idea in the text. Explain why this idea was memorable to you
In the novel The Power of One by Bryce Courtney a memorable idea is camouflage. The Power of One is a story about a young boy’s struggles in apartheid South Africa. Camouflage is a memorable idea because it’s how Peekay, the main character, lived most of his young life, it was the reason why he always had to win, and the reason he made the decision to go to the mines for a year and risk his life.
The idea of camouflage is memorable because that is how Peekay survived and lived most of his young life. When Peekay was very young he was sent to boarding school and was brutally bullied, this is where his camouflage started. He had to make himself invisible to avoid danger and being very smart had to pretend to be average. Peekay learned to blend into the background at a very young age. As he grew up he maintained his philosophy of: to survive he must stay camouflaged, but the form of his camouflage changed with his environment, “from knowing how to hide my brains I had now learned to use them”. Peekay “had the art of survival down pat”, this was the base of his camouflage which he would build on and use for many more years. I think that Peekay’s time at boarding school really shaped who he became. If he had stayed at home and not gone to boarding school he would never have developed the art of camouflage, Peekay would still be smart, but he would never survive or thrive in the way he did with camouflage. In the world today there are many boarding schools just like Peekay’s where kids get badly bullied but I think that Peekay’s school must have been an extreme case because even the teachers didn’t care about Peekay at all.
When Peekay was young his camouflage was closely linked to how the Jewish people were persecuted by Hitler, he, while not being Jewish, had the same fear of Hitler as they did. Peekay was smart for his age but had no idea of the happenings of other countries and had no understanding of politics. The only information he got on the world outside the boarding school came from the Judge, who bullied him and was not a great source of information, “Adolf Hitler is the king of Germany and god has sent him to take South Africa back from the English”. Peekay was terrified that his own country was against him because he was English “Adolf Hitler was coming to march us into the sea”. In reality Hitler would not personally come to get rid of him, South Africa was fighting against, not with, Germany. This shows how intelligence is not everything and Peekay had such a small amount of understanding that the conclusions he drew were entirely inaccurate. This led to an unreasonable fear that the Judge had created. Peekay was then prompted by the threat of persecution to strengthen his camouflage. Peekay’s fear of Hitler was a big building block on the way to perfecting the art of camouflage. I think that the author set Peekay’s childhood during World War Two because it had such a big impact on him, it strengthened his camouflage in a way nothing else could have done. Germany was a bad place for Jewish people during World War Two just as the boarding school was a bad place for Peekay. The boarding school is symbolic of Germany.
Camouflage is so memorable in the novel because it was why Peekay always had to win. As Peekay grew up, so did his camouflage. He changed his camouflage from blend into the background to be so far ahead that no one can catch you. This change took place slowly and Peekay needed a lot of convincing in order to change “To be smart is not a sin. But to be smart and not use it, that, Peekay, is a sin” . This change made Peekay much happier as he wasn’t hiding his intelligence from anyone. In order to get so far ahead Peekay had to win everything, he made sure he was always prepared so that losing wasn’t even a possibility. This started to put an enormous amount of pressure on Peekay and when he finally did lose he felt disappointment from everyone around him. Peekay was ‘perfectly indistinguishable from those few who…have so much power over the many who have none’ he got to this point from winning over and over again. For Peekay “Winning is a state of mind that embraces everything you do.” He put everything into winning and therefore put everything he had into his camouflage which eventually didn’t just protect him but also became a part of him. I think that Peekay’s mentality is false and everything shouldn’t be about winning but more about the journey he took to get there, if he lost but tried as hard as he could that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. This relates to society because there are so many high performance athletes in the world today who use similar mindsets but they were told how to build this attitude, Peekay figured it out himself. This shows how smart Peekay really is and how his past shaped him. I don’t think Peekay would ever have found this winning attitude if he hadn’t gone to boarding school and discovered camouflage.
When Peekay left school he chose to risk his life at the mines for a year, camouflage also played a big role in this. At the end of Peekay’s school career he realized that he was not just using the system but getting benefits from it and he hated that. Peekay felt that he shouldn’t be getting benefits that were virtually impossible for others to get, especially for people of color in South Africa. He knew that he was losing control of his life and also of his camouflage, which had become more than just a way to protect himself. Peekay was terrified of losing. Everything that he stood for was about going against the system and trying not to conform with society, but there he was, becoming part of it. “I needed to take one independent action to put my life back under my own control”, this action was going to the mines. In doing so Peekay disappointed his friends and family who wanted him to go straight to university. I think that Peekay wasn’t in an entirely bad position and the measures he took were a bit drastic, but it shows how strongly he feels about wanting to get rid of his camouflage. This is very memorable to me because he must be going very far out of his comfort zone to uncover himself from the camouflage which has been covering him his whole life. There are many societies in the world that young kids want to get out of and take drastic measures to do this, usually poor places in second world countries but I could see people from rich families wanting the same thing as well.
Peekay had gotten tired of winning and wanted to shed his camouflage but he had no idea how. Peekay knew that in order to shed his camouflage he had to do something that no one else wanted him to do. This was losing but “It was as though I… hadn’t developed the mechanism to do so”. Deciding to go as far away from his reputation as a winner as possible by going to the Rhodesian mines was Peekay’s way of shedding his camouflage and giving himself the opportunity to lose. It was a place where he could lose without fearing his friends’ disappointment. He was still scared to lose because one small mistake could be fatal, but if Peekay worked in the mines for long enough he would eventually make a mistake. Working the most dangerous job possible, Peekay eventually lost, coming very close to death. I think that Peekay had what many wanted and it says a lot about who he is that he would give up everything he had and disappoint all of his friends the way he did. Peekay really believes in equality, the system and camouflage are the opposite. The system is based on oppression and camouflage is based on self survival, neither of these bring people together but instead they break people apart, this is what brings about things like apartheid and racism. It shows a lot about the system also, that it’s easier to get into then it is to get out of. While this is a fictional book there are many parts of it that are real, racism is one of those and with it comes camouflage, in order to survive you have to blend in, whether by seeming perfectly average, like Peekay did when he was at boarding school, or getting ahead by winning, as Peekay did in his later life.
The idea of camouflage is memorable because it follows Peekay through The Power of One, from his early life where he discovers and lives under his camouflage, to his winning mentality and the reason he must always win, and finally when he leaves school, his decision to risk his life at the mines. Bryce Courtney made camouflage such a big part of Peekay’s life that it can’t be ignored, without camouflage Peekay would be nothing like the person he was made to be. People who have lots of significance and power in life always go through hard times that shaped them into who they are. Abraham Lincoln was a president of the United States, he grew up in poverty, became the president of the USA and then abolished slavery. Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, failed twice and almost became bankrupt before he successfully started Ford, which is now a major company with millions of dollars. I think that camouflage, which comes hand in hand with hardship, shaped Peekay the way hardship shaped these and many other successful people.
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