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A Horse and Two Goats

The text A Horse and Two Goats is written by R.K Narayan in 1970. It’s a short story and it’s about two men an American and an Indian who tries to communicate, but they cannot understand each other because they speak to different language. This story extends over a short time, maybe a half hour and takes place in a small village called Kiritam, which is indicated by a tiny dot. The Indian called Muni takes the goats to their usual spot it is a grassy place near the highway, there he is sitting in the shade of a life-sized statue of a horse with his forelegs in the air and beside the horse stood a warrior with scythe-like moustaches. The statue is moulded out of clay, barked, burnt and colored and has stood there in more than seventy years.
As Muni waits for the sight of a green bus to return home, a man step out of his car and went up to the horse. It was a red-faced American man dressed in Khaki clothing who probably a businessman, from New York asks Muni “How do you do?” Muni don’t wants to speak with him and his first impulse is to run away, but he can’t and therefore he has two communicate with the American man which seems difficult because they speaks in separate language and cannot understand each other. But later on he is very grateful for the American’s kindness.

The American man seems to be very interested in the horse statue and he asks a lot of questions about the horse. He thinks he can just purchase it from the old man, without considering what the statue means for him or the native people. This way, the American is presented as a typical wealthy western person, who is quite materialistic and thinks that money solves all problems. What can be considered as odd, and perhaps just another example of western ignorance, is that the American naturally assumes that because the old man stands beside the statute, he owns it.
At the other hand we have Muni who seems to be a poor man which we can see in line three page two “Do you smoke?” “I never even heard of it until yesterday” the old man replied”. Muni is presented as the typical poor native who is quite the opposite of the American. His salary is mentioned as in coppers and nickels, and he has not seen currency notes higher than fives and tens. Materialism is not an important factor for Muni, whose dream of a lifetime is opening up a small shop under a thatched roof, selling fried nuts, sweets and coconut to travelers in need of quenching their thirst and satisfying their hunger.
Muni also seems to be a religious man who is typical Indian and he also tells the American about the religious aspects of the horse statue and try to explain how old the statue is.
In the end the red-faced man decides to buy the horse statue and he gives one hundred rupees to Muni. The man thinks that he has bought the horse, and Muni thinks that he has sold his goats. It is clear to see that, they could not understand each other’s words.

As I mentioned earlier the short story is a conversation between a Indian and a American, and this builds up to a climax. At one moment we hear that the old man realized that some financial element was entering their talk, which could be the climax in the short story because here we finally get the feeling that there is some understanding between them, but then we hear that Muni actually has mistaken the American intentions, because he thinks that the American man wants to buy the goats. And this is the turning point in the short story which makes it to the climax.
The symbolic element in this short story is the horse statue, because with the time the people forget the statues and also the village. The village may not have been forgotten but it’s so small that people don’t think about it and this village does not seem to be knowledge. The statue also represents the next generation that are becoming not so religious and maybe more liberal. “Even the youthful vandals of the village left the statue alone” in this quote we can see that the young people do not seem to care about the religious statue.
The theme in the text is cultural differences because the American man and Muni know only a little of each other’s cultural background and they also talk about different topics because they do not understand what the other is saying. Maybe Narayan tries to tell the reader how important it is to understand each other in this world.

The two men Is to different people, which we can see by what they value. Muni is perhaps the poor man who only owns coppers and nickels, and he cannot afford the dreams because he didn’t have twenty rupees. At the other hand we have the wealthy American man who lives in New York. The Horse statue is nothing for him to buy it only a decoration and the hundred rupees he offers Muni is nothing to him. This story shows us how wealthy people are quite materialistic, while the poor people value the small things which mean a lot to them.