In addition to power and language, power in general plays a surprisingly large part in this novel. A number of characters are concerned with keeping order or with making students act according to a rule. This ranges from parents like the Allens, who force their children to do homework before anything else, to the principal Mrs. Chatham, who visits the Allens' home to try to get Nick to stop saying frindle. Power is not innately good or bad in the novel: it simply is. Different characters use different forces to fight displays of power. Nick's mother uses reason, arguing that the entire controversy is "silly"—but she also fights power with politeness and hospitality as when she offers Mrs. Chatham banana bread. Nick, of course, uses his creativity to fight official power, but he also organizes a mass grass roots movement to support and spread frindle.