book / 2016
The Power
Teenage girls develop electrical power, and the world reorganizes around fear, religion, politics, and revenge.
Verified facts
- Author
- Naomi Alderman
- Published
- 2016
- Language
- English
PlotGeeks explainer signals
Why read this explainer
New physical power changes who can enforce a demand. Follow how religion and politics give that force an account of legitimacy.
PlotGeeks note
The frame examines how later history can make a hierarchy appear natural. Its authority depends on the power whose origins it describes.
Connected knowledge
Connected in PlotGeeks
Related explainers and browse pages for The Power.
- Explore Power
Power becomes clearer when we compare who appears to hold it with who can actually change another person's choices.
Timeline
Major events
- Girls discover the power
Electrical force becomes available to girls and, through them, older women, changing who can threaten whom.
- Allie becomes Mother Eve
After escaping her foster home, Allie uses apparent healing and religious authority to gather followers.
- Institutions reorganize around force
Margot develops training camps, while Tunde reports on political upheaval and the increasingly violent state of Bessapara.
- The distant frame revisits the upheaval
Neil submits his historical reconstruction in a world where female dominance is treated as ordinary and its opposite is difficult to imagine.
Story in 60 Seconds
The short version
Girls begin developing the ability to discharge electricity through their bodies, and adult women can acquire the same power through contact with them. Roxy, the daughter of an English gangster, finds a use for her formidable strength after her mother's murder. Allie escapes an abusive foster home and becomes a religious leader, Mother Eve. American politician Margot turns training for girls into a path to influence, while Nigerian journalist Tunde documents upheavals around the world. Their stories follow institutions adjusting to a new distribution of force, including a state where women's authority produces systematic violence against men.
Spoiler sectionEnding ExplainedShow ending detailsHide ending details
Allie takes control in Bessapara and seeks a catastrophic war that will remake society. The novel's frame takes place thousands of years later, when male author Neil Adam Armon submits his reconstruction of the upheaval to a fictional Naomi Alderman. Her disbelief that men once dominated armies exposes how this later society has made its own hierarchy seem natural.
Original context
Why it matters
What the conflict reveals
Physical power changes who can threaten whom without removing the wish to dominate. Religious and political institutions adapt to the new hierarchy and justify its abuses.
Key turning points
The turning point
Allie's rise as Mother Eve turns an individual ability into religious authority. Followers can now understand the new distribution of force as a command with institutional backing.
Character links
Who connects to whom
Character motivations
What drives the characters
Margot sees political opportunity in organizing girls with the power, while Tunde wants to record what is happening. Their positions expose them to very different benefits and dangers.
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