3) The Anglo-Boer War

While reading The Power of One, by Bryce Courtenay, I realised that Courtenay includes that Peekay and all the others were situated around the Anglo-Boer War, which is a war between the British Empire and the Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republeik van Transvaal. This war was a type of civil war, between the English immigrants, that is the British Empire and also the African/Dutch immigrants, also including those who spoke the language.

The first war started out in 1880 and lasted for about a year. It was the war between the Boers, which were South Africa farmers, and the British over their independence. This war consisted of three stages, which started with the Boers, who were the African white people and Dutch Africans besieged against the British Garrisons, the name given to any British military army. The second stage was the British attacking back in offense, with a lot of troops. The British advanced and took over some of Africa. In the third stage, this is the final stage, the Boers fight against the British, raiding targets like the British railways, telegraph sites and storage depots. The British fought back getting at the Boer farms and capturing some Boers and putting them in concentration camps. A lot of women and children died in these concentration camps, almost ten thousand. This war ended in 1902, when the Boers lost hope and surrendered.

Personally I thought that the Nazi’s were bad for capturing Jews and innocent ones as well, and killing them or even gassing them in the concentration camps. But in this novel we can read and learn that even before the Nazi’s, the British were cruel, killing thousands in their concentration camps because they wanted their independence, resulting in war, and then death for thousands.

2) Context, popularity and intended audience.

In The Power of One, by Bryce Courtenay we can see many things such as the context of the novelist that is Bryce Courtenay, the popularity of the novel and its appeal and also the audience it was intended for.

We can start off with the context of the novelist, and as I mentioned earlier the novelist is Bryce Courtenay, as he wrote this novel. Courtenay was born in South Africa in the 1930’s. Courtenay went to University in Europe doing a course for journalism. From there he met his future wife and they migrated to Australia where he stayed. Courtenay started writing his novels when he moved Australia, and wrote them with the settings either taking place in Australia or in his birth-town, South Africa. As we can tell from the way that Courtenay writes, we can see that he is not a Christian.

The Power of One is quite a successful book. It is very popular and many people have either read the book or someone else has mentioned or talked about the book to/with them. This book has even been so popular that they made a more appealing and appropriate book for children, that does not include the rude and crudeness of the original book.

Personally I think that this novel should have the rating of M, for mature audiences, but ratings like that are only in movies and films, but the audience that I think it was intended for was teenagers or maybe the early teenagers and adults, but in all honestly this book should be meant for more mature audiences, as in late teenagers to adults with the language and themes it consists of.

1) My reflections and views about the novel.

  

From reading the first few chapters of The Power of One, written by Bryce Courtenay, I have gotten an idea about what his novel is about. That it is highly about justice, racism and the unfairness between different cultures. Although I have only read the first few chapters I haven’t really gotten a full idea of what this novel is about. At first it was the thought of having to read a book for English which made me procrastinate, but then once I started reading the exposition, I really got into it and didn’t want to put the book down, even though I had other work or even sleep to go to.

 

What puts me off this book is the language of Courtenay, he uses a lot of blasphemy which although we have blotted it out in the book, it still puts me off because sometimes extra is blotted out and you miss parts of the novel and it doesn’t make sense, although this has nothing to do with the author. Another point is the fact that this is not a Christian author, and we will hardly ever read books from a Christian author with a Christian perspective, but it is nice to be able to read from a Christian.

From reading these first few chapters we get a sense of what this novel is going to be about, for instance in the exposition, we can know what the context is about and also the setting, in the first chapter and on the first page, we can see that this novel takes place in Africa. How do we know this? Because it talks about the character having a Zulu wet nurse, and Zulu is the great African tribe. Also another give away that this book takes place in Africa because of the animals which are mentioned on the first page, the baboons, we know that it is definitely not an Australian book because we do not have wild baboons.

By reading through the first chapters we can see that Peekay is bullied, he is bullied at the Boarding School which he is staying at because his mother had a personal breakdown.

From reading the first few chapters we can see that Peekay starts to get a hold of the bullies, by not showing his emotions and also by getting a hold of some things that they bullied him about, for instance, they bullied him about his wetting his bed, but once he met Inkosi-Inkosikazi and once he got ‘Grandpa Chook’ he conquered his bed wetting stage. Then the bullies couldn’t bother him about that, and so they had one less thing.

I heard from others that this is actually a really good book, and I am thinking that too, I heard that later on Peekay learns to fight, and therefore fighting back against the bullies, so he learns to stand up for himself.