Cloud 9 Power Quotes

When Joshua first enters the play, he makes sure to let all of us know that he's firmly on the white people's side when it comes to colonization. He's bought into the idea that whites are superior and that they should have power over other races. The thing is, of course, that Joshua's totally pretending; he actually wants to kill his master Clive.

It's kind of funny that Clive thinks being a man should give him power over others. Because at the end of the day, he works for a woman named Queen Victoria.

Clive argues in his nice sing-song way that when it comes to creating brotherhood among all of the world's peoples, you might need to use a little war. The dude really doesn't seem to recognize the hypocrisy of using war to promote peace. But then again, there's lots of hypocrisy Clive doesn't recognize.

When Harry Bagley is left alone with the servant Joshua, he asks the boy if he'd like to have some sex in the barn. Since Joshua is a servant, Harry makes sure to add that this isn't an order, since he wants Joshua to agree of his own free will. But even the fact that Harry mentions this shows us that Joshua is in a position where he could be ordered to have sex.

Mrs. Saunders has come to Clive for protection, but she soon realizes that it's Clive who she needs to be protected from. Basically, Clive agrees to give Mrs. Saunders a sense of security… in exchange for sex. He blackmails her by using his authority as a local government official and the fact that he has a lot of guns in his house.

When Mrs. Saunders has finally had enough of not being in control her own life, she decides to leave Africa for good. She wants power over herself and her life, so she decides to head back to England and buy a farm. Then she'll finally be her own boss.

When Victoria presses Lin to express gratitude for her former husband, Lin is only grateful for the fact he didn't hit her harder than he did. Lin is totally sick of letting her husband push her around. It's time to live life totally on her own terms, which is why she has decided to raise Cathy without a man in her life.

Even though Lin has been the victim of physical abuse, that doesn't stop her from threatening her own kid with a smack whenever Cathy starts bugging her too much. There might be a little hypocrisy going on there, but only because Churchill wants to hammer the point home that power is synonymous with violence.

Edward and Gerry have a messy relationship: Gerry holds all the power and totally treats Edward like garbage. When Eddy expresses concern about where Gerry's been spending his nights, Gerry simply warns Edward to stop asking him so many questions. In other words, he's telling Edward, "I'm going to do what I want and you're going to keep your mouth shut." Unfortunately, Edward is so passive he actually accepts this… for the time being.

Cathy likes to play with traditionally masculine toys like plastic guns. But when she tries to play with a group of boys called the "Dead Hand Gang," they give her a bloody nose and steal her ice cream. Meanies. They also tell her she can't play because she's a girl. This kind of abuse is no doubt going to shape Cathy's sense of gender and power for the rest of her life, and it's pretty painful to see her free spirit getting crushed.