In Zadie Smith's short story, Two Men Arrive in a Village, two men come into a village and wreak havoc on it and its people. Few have pointless courage, but it's just that, pointless courage. Once the leader comes back to her damaged village, she shows little interest in finding the culprit. In Smith's story, she uses fear and dark modern language to represent leadership. In doing so, she maintains the image of a fearful, powerful leader who destroys things in terror and violence.Smith uses dark language and undertones in a universal them about fear and leadership. I believe that power driven by fear is a key point or idea in the short story, Two Men Arrive in a Village. We know that the two men who arrive in the village are leaders or are …show more content…
I feel as though she accomplished her goal of creating a universal theme of power, fear, and terror. Smith used frightful details that set up a story that related both to universal and local themes. Smith’s story provoked emotions in the reader such as sadness, fear, and confusion. Reading the story at first was not easy. Although it was a brilliantly written story, it took time and analysis for me to quite get it. At first I read the story to myself and thought that this was just a story of two soldiers terrorizing women in a village. I then listened to Smith, herself read the story, and saw another side to it. Analyzing the story and the details in it helped me to better understand the difference between local and universal theme. Additionally, Smith took what we would think as a local theme of terror in a village and wrote it in such a way that the theme became universal. What village? Where at in the world? By not giving these details to the reader, this turns it into a universal theme of power, fear, and terror. Overall, my opinion of this story is that it was strategically written to be analyzed and comprehended through repetition. It is not a story to be read once and