Power and Violence
Alderman explores the theme of power and violence in her novel The Power. As the novel sets off, the reader is first introduced to a case of violence that is being inflicted upon two women, a fourteen-year-old named Roxy and her mother. The novel begins when two men break into Roxy and her mother's house wielding knives. This is before the women acquire their electrostatic power. It brings to light the concept of power that the men have and the following violence that they inflict on the women. This is further brought out through a character named Allie, who also suffers in the hands of her foster father. Allie is raped by his foster father, who does so calling her a whore after he sees her trying to fend off boys that also try to have their way with her. When eventually power is transferred from the men to women, the novel's title takes form as it generally revolves around power and the effects that it has on the people who possess it.
Moral decadence and corruption
Even though in the early stages of the novel, most of the violence is exercised upon the women, as the novel progresses, Alderman transfers this power to the women. Most of the women initially use their power to exert justice. However, this changes in the later chapters as the novel-write explores how this power changes and corrupts their morals as some of the women characters use their powers for their selfish gains.
For instance, Allie, an Alabaman teen after she escapes, decides to change her name so as to have an entirely peaceful life. When she goes to the convent, she takes over the leadership role, having changed her name to Eve and now being referred to as Mother Eve. As Eve continues preaching this religion to the people, it is perceived as a teaching of love and peace, a concept that is proved to be far from it. When one of the nuns becomes doubtful of Allie, she kills her. Allie’s moral corruption is deep-rooted. She is power-hungry and even tells Roxy of her wish to bomb the people back to the stone age just so that women can have more power than the men—to create a matriarchy rather than a patriarchy. Allie’s behavior can be argued as a valid symbol of moral corruption.
Deception and religious manipulation
After Allie escapes from her abusive foster home in Alabama, she ends up in a convent where she believes she might never be safe until she is in total charge of the convent and later the world as a whole. In the beginning, Allie uses deception to create a new name for herself. She goes by the name Eve rather than her usual name Allie. While this can be viewed as only a way to enhance her survival at the convent, this takes a drastic turn for the worse.
Leaning towards even more deception, Allie begins teaching a new religion after taking over the convent. Instead of teaching a new religion that is different from the original one, Allie employs manipulative tactics to twist aspects of the original religion to fit her ideologies. Allie includes certain aspects that people are willing to believe in to get them to believe in it. For instance, she begins to refer to God as a woman, a concept that is shocking to the other girls at first. The girls, however, welcome the good news as they realize the supremacy that they might have with God as a woman.
