Two Words
24 pages • 48-minute read
Isabel AllendeTwo Words
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Themes
The Power of Words
As its title suggests, the power of words is a central theme of the story. Words have the power to transform and can be a vehicle for freedom and independence.
Belisa’s ability to use words to escape a poverty and servitude and achieve independence demonstrates the transformative power of language. When she becomes an itinerant storyteller, she uses words as currency, selling them in the market to support herself and achieve independence. She purchases access to the written language by paying a priest to teach her to read. Her acquisition of literacy catalyzes the plot and the Colonel’s political trajectory, but it also enables impoverished people without access to education to remain connected to distant loved ones and the broader world through the letters she writes for them and the information she conveys from town to town.
The power of words is demonstrated again when the words Belisa sells to the Colonel for a political speech change his country’s trajectory. The soldiers and all who hear the words in Belisa’s speech are dazzled and inspired by their clarity and poetic lucidity. Her words capture their hearts, leaving them with feelings of hope and optimism and lifting them out of political strife. Crowds are moved to tears, ending the violence of the rebellion and leading to free and fair elections that end the country’s civil strife. This reflects Isabel Allende’s belief that nonviolence can be used to bring about change.
Allende shows that the power of words is available to all who choose to use it: “Words make their way into the world without a master” (5). They offer choices and provide opportunities to achieve self-determination, which gives them the power to inspire hope. They can also incite passion, as Allende demonstrates by the way in which they impact El Mulato. When he feels drawn to Belisa, “an avalanche of words” (10) changes his desire to rage. Words’ effect on crowds and on the Colonel demonstrates their magical properties. They can mesmerize and entice, and they have the power to transform fear and hatred to love and respect.
The Power of Women and Feminist Ascendency
In “Two Words,” Allende explores the power of women to bring about change and transformation. The two male characters, by contrast, are powerful, strong men but they are changed by the power of her words and subject to her control.
The resilience of women is a recurring theme in Allende’s work. Her characters demonstrate that despite fear and adversity, women can persist, overcome, achieve, and remain strong and defiant. Allende illustrates this theme when Belisa chooses to survive and “trick death.” She survives a treacherous journey and discovers a way to support herself. Even after her violent abduction, when she regains consciousness, she is “indignant” and unafraid, and “she demands an explanation” (7). She remains resolute again, even in the face of El Mulato’s aggression when he returns to take her back to the camp. As the story unfolds, Belisa uses words to sustain her mobility and increasing power.
The story’s principal male characters rely on Belisa to achieve their ends. The Colonel is known as the “most feared man in all the land” (7), yet he is unable to achieve his political goals without her. His illiteracy excludes him from the power of language. El Mulato resents her, yet he acknowledges her power over his commander and the transformative effects of his words on the crowd.
Sexuality and femininity are also explored as aspects of Belisa’s power. Her Belisa’s physicality and sensuality draw both the Colonel and El Mulato to her; they are attracted to her animal-like smell as well as to her body. Belisa uses her sexuality to wield power when she leans in to whisper secret words in the Colonel’s ear, awakening his obsession with her. She further demonstrates her control over the men by using words to deflect El Mulato’s interest in her, thereby protecting herself through language.
By the end of the story, El Mulato determines that Belisa has destroyed the Colonel’s masculinity. He is no longer the ferocious man he was when she first met him nor the master of his own destiny. His fate is to be with her, and he is unable to resist her seductive powers. In the last lines of the story, she exerts control, walking toward him and taking his hand as he remains passive.
Autonomy and Self-Determination
Allende explores the ability to make choices, define one’s own future, and achieve independence, freedom, and autonomy through Belisa’s story. In the first lines of “Two Words,” the narrator states that Belisa chose her own name. This initial choice represents her ability to define herself, demonstrating the power of choice and independence. By contrast, the male characters have titles or tags that are “ineradicably” linked to violence and strength. They have no power to choose their own names. The Colonel is defined only by his army rank; El Mulato is crudely defined only in terms of his biracial identity. The narrator never reveals either man’s name.
The story continues with Belisa’s choice to make a journey after her siblings’ death. This journey of self-discovery is a question of survival and represents her first step in exerting agency. If she chooses to remain stagnant, she is likely to die due to poverty and lack of options for supporting herself. By moving forward, Belisa rejects a life of inevitable servitude. Her survival and success demonstrate that it is possible to choose and achieve autonomy.
Allende also uses the Colonel as a vehicle to explore the theme of self-determination. Scarred and extremely lonely, he chooses to forsake violence, but he must seek aid from Belisa to change his destiny. Doomed to fail if he doesn’t transform his image, he crafts a strategy to win over the people by appealing to their emotions. He uses the language that Belisa shapes to elicit tears and motivate political change, urging the crowd to express its will through voting rather than through violence. However, language prevents him from attaining full autonomy, as he willingly submits to Belisa after becoming mesmerized by the power of her words.
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