The Characteristics Of Peekay In The Power Of One

The Way He Is In the book, The Power of One, the main character Peekay has a vast amount of traits that make up his peculiar personality. Three of these personality traits are resilience, maturity, and independence, and he gets each from a different life experience or person he meets. These, combined with something he called his “camouflage,” made it possible for Peekay to get through the rough patches in his life. Peekay’s personality traits show up in a different part of his life, but they all come together to help him survive in the end. A major trait that Peekay acquires while he is in his first all boys boarding school is resilience. During his first term at boarding school, he is persecuted and physically tortured for being English.

Peekay struggled financially throughout his life, so he missed out on several opportunities. An opportunity that he had was getting the Rhodes Scholarship, and he missed it due to his choice of independence. “He sensed my need to act independently and that to some large degree the Rhodes Scholarship would achieve his aim” (463). Morrie is offering Peekay money to go to college at Oxford for a degree in law, but Peekay is refusing. Peekay says that if he takes Morrie’s father’s money he would have to go to college all day everyday to justify it. His dream is to become welterweight champion of the world and go to college on the side, but he doesn’t want anyone’s help. If he gets into a college, he wants to do it on his own and with his own money. Peekay had a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to Oxford University to get a degree that would essentially help him later in his life, but he does not take it. Peekay values his independence very much which is one reason why boxing is so important to him. In the text he states, “The only totally independent thing in my life was my ambition to become welterweight champion of the world…It was the one thing in my life that seemed to make sense to me” (462). Boxing is something that Peekay has always known to be his own; something that he loved without the help of anyone else. Most of the people around him, besides a few people, did not understand the complete concept of boxing and how Peekay could love it so much. This is what makes it independent for him because there are not many people that can relate to his love and passion for it. Boxing is something that Peekay can work on, on his own without the help of others because it comes so naturally to him. In a way, his independence is somewhat a stubborn trait as well because he missed out on a great experience just to prove that he can take care of himself. One might say that his strong independence is a