Survival In Bryce Courtenay's The Power Of One

Playing the Game of Camouflage Sometimes life seems to be all about being able to blend in, whether it be through staying at the back of the crowd, or standing at the front. Life seems to become a sort of game of who can be the most unique, or the most different. In Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One, Peekay, a boy with a passion for boxing, undergoes the struggles of growing up in a racially divided South Africa and develops his camouflage to survive the hardships of life. Peekay's adaptation and camouflage are symbolic of his mindset and how he changes his way of thinking to ultimately achieve the power of one. Peekay receives his first lesson of survival when he attends a boarding school, where he is the only English boy. He is subjected
However, with the help of several mentors he is able to work his way out of this mindset. Doc, along with the other mentors, begin to break down Peekay's camouflage, and allow him to start to feel more comfortable with himself. Peekay says, "I quickly earned a reputation, rather unjustly, for being clever. Doc had persuaded me to drop my camouflage and not to play dumb." (167) However, he calls the compliments "rather unjust", showing he is not as secure as he should be. Peekay says that he has "dropped his camouflage", but in fact he gains a replacement camouflage, one that protects his vulnerabilities by overemphasizing his strong traits. Peekay's "enormous need to win touched on a whole heap of other responses... While I didn't think of it as camouflage, I know now that it was, that I kept myself protected by being out in front." (370) Peekay, for the first time in his life, extends his knowledge and strength beyond himself and leaps forward. However, he still retains a small but profound fear of losing, and his way of protecting this vulnerability is by being too far in front of everyone else. The feeling of being the best is its own camouflage, one that hides his lesser side but still is not Peekay's complete self. The camouflage fails once Peekay is unable to earn the Rhodes scholarship, which no one expected -- he seemed to be a
In his work at the mines, he feels his camouflage beginning to fade, as he doesn't feel the pressure of accommodating to what others want him to be: "My camouflage... was now threatening to become the complete man. It was time to slough the mottled and cunningly contrived outer skin and emerge as myself, to face the risk of exposure, to regain the power of one." (488) Though he acknowledges that his camouflage was clever and effective, it hid the truth of who Peekay really was -- in his words, "the masquerade had become more important than the truth." (488). Peekay had become all too focused on mastering his camouflage, protecting himself when there was no need, and hiding the truth. He must face the "risk of exposure", or disappointing his mentors and family for not following their expectations, but it was in order to "become the complete man", one that camouflage would not be able to show. Camouflage was useful for Peekay to survive the various systems he was forced under -- school and a racist society. However, the true way to survive was not to just live with it, but for him to shape himself into the person he wanted to be, instead of adapting to what others forced him to