Power Of One Thesis

The film The Power of One chronicles the childhood a young boy named P.K. growing up in South Africa during Apartheid. As an Englishman, P.K. suffers prejudice at the hands of his Dutch peers, and witnesses even greater injustice served to the native African population. These racially-motivated acts move P.K. to turn down a scholarship to Oxford to remain in South Africa and work towards equality in his homeland. Even as a child, the Afrikaners at P.K.’s boarding school treat him with incredible cruelty. The Afrikaner population considers the English a threat to their land and immediately carry prejudice against them. P.K.’s fellow students spit and urinate on him, led by the ringleader Jaapie Botha. His teachers give animated sermons about how they will crush the English and reclaim the land God has given to the Afrikaners. P.K. quickly learns that he has somehow done something wrong which has brought the wrath of the Afrikaners upon him. Equally devout supporters of the Nazi party during World War II, his persecutors hold a bizarre and frightening Nazi ritual in which they swear allegiance to Hitler, kill P.K.’s beloved chicken, and nearly kill P.K. himself. This treatment shows P.K. the ingrained racism held by almost every Afrikaner and introduces him to a world of injustice from a young age. His sobering

P.K.’s rough childhood, the cruel treatment of inmates at the prison, the terrible living conditions of Alexandra, and finally Maria’s death all fall under the negative effects of the prejudice between the Afrikaner and English, and whites and blacks. Similarly tragic stories exist in other instutions of racism, from the oppression of Indians by the British to the Jim Crow laws in the United States. In both instances, one simple person rose above and united the masses to combat injustice, from Martin Luther King, Jr to