Scribd
Upload
19 views2 pages

Exploring Death in Soyinka's Play

Death and the King’s Horseman is a modern play by Soyinka that intertwines traditional Yoruba drama with European literary forms, exploring themes of duty, colonial interference, and cultural conflict. The plot centers on Elesin, who must commit ritual suicide to follow his king into death, but is thwarted by the English district officer, leading to chaos. The Norton Critical Edition includes valuable essays providing context and criticism, highlighting the complexities of the play and its cultural implications.

Uploaded by

chilotanna4
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
19 views2 pages

Exploring Death in Soyinka's Play

Death and the King’s Horseman is a modern play by Soyinka that intertwines traditional Yoruba drama with European literary forms, exploring themes of duty, colonial interference, and cultural conflict. The plot centers on Elesin, who must commit ritual suicide to follow his king into death, but is thwarted by the English district officer, leading to chaos. The Norton Critical Edition includes valuable essays providing context and criticism, highlighting the complexities of the play and its cultural implications.

Uploaded by

chilotanna4
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Death and the King’s Horseman

As good a modern play as any I am familiar with. Soyinka brilliantly seizes on a literary
possibility granted him by a painful history: he synthesizes the festal form of traditional Yoruba
drama which he explains at length in an essay included in this volume, “Theatre in Traditional
African Cultures”with European modes (particularly the ironic-tragic pageantry of Euripides in
the market scenes and Shavian social satire when treating the dangerously bumbling English
colonizers).

The plot: the title character, Elesin, is obliged to follow his king into death; when the English
district officer, Pilkings, hears of Elesin’s intention to commit ritual suicide (an act that coincides
with the Prince’s visit to Nigeria on a tour of the colonies), he resolves to put a stop to it.
Predictably, Pilking’s high-handed interference brings on chaos and destruction—though Elesin
himself is not blameless, arrogantly claiming a young bride on the eve of his death, an act that
creates further complications. This is a simple but mysterious tragic action, obeying the unities of
time, but richly elaborated in a language that can seemingly do anything, from the scabrous
lyricism of the praise-singer to the well-intentioned hauteur of the district officer’s wife to the
exuberant sexual taunting of the market girls to the chastened anti-colonial sensibility of the
king’s horseman’s English-educated son. Brief quotations will not give an adequate sense of the
play’s vitality and variety, so I will simply recommend that you read it.

This Norton Critical Edition, edited by Simon Gikandi, is immensely useful. It contains an essay
on Yoruba cosmology that provides context for Elesin’s actions as well as the aforementioned
history of traditional African theater by Soyinka. There is also an example of Yoruba drama—
Duro Lapido’s The King Is Dead to demonstrate the indigenous materials Soyinka was
adapting to his hybrid drama. As for the literary criticism gathered here, I didn’t read it all, but
two standouts are Anthony Appiah’s essay that gently upbraids Soyinka for reifying “Africa” in
a partial and culturally nationalist way (i.e., making Yoruba culture into a romanticized
“traditional Africa” while contemptuously dismissing Christianity and Islam) and Henry Louis
Gates, Jr.’s lucid explanation of the play’s complex affiliations and disaffiliations with European
tragedy. A 1992 article by Tanure Ojaide on teaching the play in American classrooms offers a
concrete illustration of the cultural translations necessary to make Soyinka’s vision legible even
in the postcolonial academy, though Ojaide does include some hair-raising language about
African-American students and about gender that would probably not pass by an editor today.
I was most entertained if that is the word by a confrontation between a Marxist critic and
Soyinka himself. The critic, Biodun Jeyifo, complains that the play “rationalizes the rule of the
dazzling FEW (Elesin) over the deceived MANY (the women, the retinue, Amusa, etc.).” Unlike
Appiah’s persuasive challenge to Soyinka’s romantic nationalism, this polemic (in my view)
flattens the play’s complexity and irony (as if Elesin were a simply positive figure!). Soyinka
replies with an energetic rebuke (originally published in a volume edited by Jeyifo himself, I
note) that is one of the best writerly replies to reductive ideological criticism I’ve ever read, and
here I’ll end:
In other words, the desire to ‘put off Death’, ‘to come to terms with Death’, to ‘communalise’ Death so
as to make it more bearable for the individual, ‘to humour Death’ (a quasi-magical propitiation), these
are all social and individual devices and of course they make for untidiness in ‘scientific’ systems, so they
have to be wished away. Now the actual forms which such devices take can of course be translated in
terms of property and productive relations, etc., the most direct expressions of which have been the
slaughter of slaves and retainers, mummification, domestic animal cult, egungun and other court-
oriented cults, etc., etc. The poet, especially the mythopoet, is not entirely satisfied with that secondary
level of forms of inventiveness or appropriation, however, and while he deals in concrete
manifestations, may choose not to further reduce the original primordial fear by new extra epochal
analytical games. For that is to move away from the mythopoeic source—and for no discernible
illuminating results for the specific poetic enterprise. Nobody, I hope, will tell us that the fear of—or at
the very least, the resentment of, sense of unpleasantness about, etc.—Death is simply due to the failure
of the individual or society to as yet exist within an egalitarian environment. My suspicion is that this
need to communally contain Death will always be there. Whether indeed the desperation with which
this primary (human) hostility to death is sublimated under historico-materialist incantations is not in
itself a superstitious device for evading the end of the material self is a question that can only be
resolved by a deep probing of the critic’s deeper sub-conscious. Certainly it leads easily to a tendency
towards ‘vulgar Marxist criticism’ or, in this context, superstitious Marxism.

Common questions

Powered by AI

Pilkings' interference results in chaos and destruction, highlighting the catastrophic consequences of colonial misunderstanding and disrespect for indigenous traditions. His actions demonstrate a broader critique of colonial arrogance and the imposition of foreign values on traditional societies, leading to cultural dissonance and the unraveling of social order .

Elesin's decision to claim a young bride on the eve of his death complicates his character, presenting him as both a revered figure fulfilling a sacred duty and a flawed individual succumbing to earthly desires. This act introduces themes of human imperfection and the tension between personal desires and communal obligations, which deepens the play's exploration of duty and failure .

Soyinka synthesizes elements of traditional Yoruba drama, characterized by myths and rituals, with European theatrical modes such as the tragic-ironic pageantry of Euripides and Shavian social satire. This integration is particularly evident in the market scenes of the play, which combine symbolic and communal aspects typical of Yoruba festivals with the high-handed interference and consequential chaos typical of European tragic narratives .

Soyinka addresses this tension by illustrating the conflict between Elesin's ritual obligations and Pilkings' colonial intervention, symbolizing the wider clash between indigenous African practices and imposed colonial values. Through characters like Elesin and Pilkings, Soyinka juxtaposes European rationalism against African spiritualism, critiquing the colonial dismissal of Yoruba traditions as primitive or irrelevant .

Biodun Jeyifo interprets the play as a justification of the rule of the 'dazzling FEW' over the 'deceived MANY,' criticizing it for perpetuating a hierarchical social order. Soyinka rebuffs this reading, arguing that such an analysis overlooks the play’s mythopoeic elements and reduces its complexity to economic determinism, which misses the spiritual and existential dimensions of death and society depicted in the play .

Soyinka portrays death as a communal experience rather than an individual loss, where rituals are vital in symbolically affirming societal values and facilitating the transition between worlds. Through Elesin's intended ritual suicide, the play emphasizes the Yoruba belief in the interdependence of the living and the dead, highlighting the socio-spiritual aspects of death in contrast to more materialist Western perceptions .

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. provides an analysis of 'Death and the King's Horseman,' explicating the play’s complex relationships with European tragedy. He explores how the play both affiliates with and disaffiliates from European forms, considering Soyinka’s innovative blending of cultural elements to craft a unique narrative that transcends simple comparison or categorization within existing European frameworks .

Soyinka challenges European theatrical traditions by infusing the play with Yoruba cosmology and dramatic forms, emphasizing community and ritual over individual plight, which contrasts with the typically individual-centered tragedies of Europe. His use of rich, diverse language further subverts European traditions, incorporating elements like exuberant sexual taunting and anti-colonial sentiments that reflect African cultural realities and perspectives .

Anthony Appiah criticizes Soyinka for idealizing Yoruba culture as a romanticized version of 'traditional Africa' while disregarding the roles of Christianity and Islam, thus presenting a partial and culturally nationalist view. Appiah argues that this approach reifies Africa in ways that may ignore its complex realities and diverse cultural influences .

The Norton Critical Edition provides valuable context and resources such as essays on Yoruba cosmology and traditional African theater, enabling deeper comprehension of Soyinka’s cultural references and dramatic techniques. By including critical essays and examples of indigenous drama like Duro Lapido’s 'The King Is Dead,' it illustrates the play’s hybrid nature and aids in understanding its thematic richness and historical significance .

You might also like