The Power Of One Sparknotes

In Bryce Courtenay's novel The Power Of One, A young boy named Peekay is growing up in South Africa, and his dream is to become the welterweight boxing champion. Growing up he gets bullied and develops a camouflage to help him survive. The Judge was a bully at the boarding school Peekay went to. He tortures Peekay and makes him his slave. Peekay forms an idea of how the judge made him a tougher person with the big idea of having a camouflage to survive the system he encounters. On adventure, he explores to find himself and the power of one. With the help of Doc and Hoppie, he learns how to get rid of his camouflage to find his true self where he doesn't feel the need to blend in and use his camouflage; he sees that he can live without

At first, it changes his mindset to where he accepts that he can't do anything because he's different from the other kids, along with using his camouflage to protect himself. In class Peekays, teacher hits him for pretending to not know his twelves table which led to her getting angry and hitting him with a ruler. Which caused a traumatic event. Peekays ear got sliced and the teacher fell to the ground from seeing the blood from his ear. “Look what happens when you forget your camouflage pisskop” I observed to myself”( Courtney 33). When the judge made fun of him for wetting his bed and torturing him. At a young age, Peekay learned how to camouflage himself and be able to survive and blend in with everyone else at a young

Peekay meets different people throughout his life that help him drop his camouflage. Meeting Hoppie changed Peekay's life. Hoppie was one of the guards on the train when Peekay went to Barberton. Although they only knew each other for around 24 hours, Hoppie managed to give Peekay what he never thought he would ever have- what he calls the power of one. This gave Peekay the big inspiration for the idea of the head and the heart, the recipe that will lead him to success. “He had given me the power of one- one idea, one heart, one mind, one plan, one determination” (Courtney 103). The inspiration that Hoppie gave Peekay, not only changed his misconception about small can’t beat big but also gave the big inspiration to head to the power of one. Furthermore, this gives Peekay hope and encouragement of becoming a boxing welterweight