Power of One
Individual Study Critical Essay Compare and Contrast the different ways the protagonists in ‘The Power of One’ By Bryce Courtney and ‘Chinese Cinderella’ by Adeline Yen Mah, overcome personal hardships to achieve success. When reading these two powerful stories, it is easy to be overcome with emotions and joy at the tremendous achievement and personal strength both Peekay (The Power of One) and Adeline (Chinese Cinderella) display in their young lives, and the power they manage to pull from inside themselves to triumph over the situations they have been placed in, to create a new and successful life. As ‘Chinese Cinderella’ is an Autobiography of Adeline’s life, and ‘The Power of One’ is a fictional story, the comparison between the two will be quite different, yet both characters main source of help comes from a special friend who holds great wisdom and strength to pass on to each character. ... As Peekay starts this time by himself, with no one to help him, he must wait until he can return home to receive the wisdom of nanny to correct his predicament. ... As with Peekay in ‘The Power of One’, Adeline in ‘Chinese Cinderella’ holds a very special person close to her heart who helps Adeline through every trouble she has right throughout her life. Adeline’s life seems to be a catalogue of one unhappy incident after another. ... Peekay was extremely smart and he always hid this from the world, it was one of the things he was proud of, yet he didn’t want to get hurt by anything or anyone, so he played dumb and kept in the background so that he wouldn’t have any problems. ... If anything ever happened in Peekay’s life, Doc was always the one to be there to comfort him.