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.