Power Corrupted In The Novel 'Gone' By Michael Grant

a) The central issue represented in the novel ‘Gone’ is that power corrupts. I believe that Michael Grant has effectively conveyed this issue throughout the novel and has given multiple examples of this issue throughout the book. The first major example of this is issue is when Orc and his gang of bullies take control of Perdido Beach. Orc and Gang were one major example of how power corrupts as once all the adults disappeared they assumed their position as leaders as they were the, largest, strongest and most dangerous inhabitants of the FAYZ. Some examples of this in the book is one page 47 when the ‘gang’ take the weapons from the hardware store to display their power and authority. Orc's crew brought a couple of wood axe handles and wooden
baseball bats out of the hardware store and tried unsuccessfully to burn them. They also carried metal and small sledgehammers from the hardware store. Those they kept. Later on during the book these weapons are used by the bullies to attack and kill people. One such victim of these attacks was Bouncing Betty who died by a metal bat to the head from Orc all because this power went to his head and corrupted him. You can cleanly see the power change from when the adults were around and authority was around preventing small fights and verbal abuse but in the new world ‘FAYZ’ everything is drastically different and now the bullies make the rules and those who disobey die. Another example of this is the antagonist Caine Soren and how power corrupted him. When he first discovers his powers he hides them but them the power corrupted him causing him to want to control his peers, his school, his town and basically everybody. This can be seen throughout the novel when he elects himself mayor, creates rules allowing him to be the only one to possess so much power and also his major battle between his brother Sam Temple to see whether he would control Perdido Beach, during these scenes in the novel he goes to extreme lengths to kill Sam and destroy those who resisted as you can see in this excerpt on page 509, This is going to be my world. He slapped his chest. Me. ‘I’m going to run the FAYZ, the FAYZ is not going to run me. It’s time to win, I’ll have complete control.’ Out of these two major example you can clearly see that the issue in this novel is that power corrupts which has been conveyed very well throughout this novel.