Powerful: A Powerless Story

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 5

Chapters 6-11

Chapters 12-17

Chapters 18-23

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Sticky Buns

Adena’s obsession with sticky buns is symbolic of Adena herself—her sweetness and her sunny optimism. Lauren Roberts first introduces Adena as she attempts to steal a sticky bun from a merchant prior to meeting Paedyn. The description of her flight from the Imperial who gives chase includes repeated mentions of the honey coating her hands and fingers. Five years later, she meets Makoto during a similar act of theft in which Roberts again uses descriptive details that emphasize the sweet, sticky honey that ends up all over her hands. Adena herself often thinks about her love for these honey-glazed treats, and when she bargains with Makoto over the terms of their agreement, she makes daily sticky buns one of her conditions. Over the course of the novel, Roberts continues to identify Adena with sticky buns, reinforcing the connection through Makoto’s observations that she “smells of honey, of happiness incarnate” (41). He even develops a habit of calling her “Honey,” because, he teases her, “You are what you eat” (164). Makoto reflects that, on the day they met, Adena “risked it all for a sticky bun” (31), indicating not only Adena’s devotion to the sweet snack, but also her passion for what it symbolizes: preserving an optimistic outlook and a positive attitude, despite the adversities she faces on a daily basis in the grim city of Loot. In this way, Roberts reinforces the sense of Adena’s optimism as a form of resistance against the oppressive systems around her.

Knives

Knives, one of the main items Makoto makes in his blacksmith’s forge, come to symbolize Makoto himself. When Adena first meets Makoto, she thinks that he is “breathtaking in the way [she imagines] a stab wound to be” and compares him to “a blade…sharp and cold” (20-21). He has a single silver streak cutting through the darkness of his hair, not unlike the blade of a knife, and “sharp cheekbones” (21). Adena is fascinated by the weapons that Makoto makes, and his explanation of this specialty encapsulates much of his worldview: “Everyone in the slums should have a way to defend themselves. It’s survival of the fittest” (38). He spends his free time coming up with creative new knife designs, and at one point even tries to convince Adena to learn to defend herself from a knife attack; it is as unnatural to her as it is natural to him, however, and she refuses to even try. This scene symbolizes Adena’s general inability to “defend” herself from falling for Makoto despite his often cold and critical demeanor. Similarly, on her first visit to Makoto’s home, Adena is cut by the blade of a hidden dagger, foreshadowing the way that Makoto will “cut through” her emotional defenses and wound her by lying to her and secretly planning to leave her behind in Loot after freeing Hera. After this betrayal, even Adena’s needle becomes a knife-like reminder of Makoto: While she is trying to sew Paedyn’s dress for the ball, she accidentally pricks herself again and again, because all she can think about is Makoto.

Light

Throughout Powerful, Adena is symbolically identified with light, because she is a source of comfort and guidance to those around her. At one point, Makoto thinks, “If darkness is the absence of light, then that is what I am when she is not around” (151), and he feels thankful for the direction her light provides. Before meeting Adena, Makoto seldom smiled or showed compassion for others, and he deliberately isolated himself. Under her influence, he begins smiling and joking around with her, letting himself be vulnerable by doing things like practicing sewing and skipping—and falling in love. He brings her sticky buns, comforts her, and protects her from street violence. Adena thinks of herself as Makoto’s “bright spot among the bleak” (146), and Makoto comments that she “deserves a fairy-tale fate, a life worthy of her light” (75). After she tells Makoto that she counts the stars to fall asleep at night, Makoto tells her that one day she will make the stars envy her light when she is “up there beside them, outshining every single one” (159). This foreshadows what happens to Adena at the novella’s end. After her execution during the final Trial, she dies counting the stars and then merges with the sun itself. Ironically, it is a kind of “fairy-tale fate,” although certainly not what Makoto had in mind when he made the comment about her worth. After her death, Makoto says, “In a way, she’s always been the sun. Always the brightness that existed despite the presence of such darkness” (220). Adena’s own words in the novella’s brief final chapter confirm that she has now literally become light, shining “warm and bright, and high above” those she loves (221).