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“Wole Soyinka: DEATH AND The KING’S HPRSEMAN”

Soyinka’s Life Is Yoruba, Soyinka won the Nobel Prize in Literature, one of Soyinka’s
tragedies, presents a symbol of the Yoruba world. In Yoruba, there are three worlds: the world of
the living, of the dead, and of the unborn. This play focuses on what connects all three worlds’
transition, the pathway on which members of the different worlds meet and interact. In the
Yoruba city of Oyo, Nigeria, the King has died. Elesin, the king’s horseman, enters the village in
a majestic dance parade, charted by singers and drummers. He performs poetry and song about
the world of the ancestors and of the three worlds. The purpose of this ceremony is to help the
dead king travel peacefully to the world of the dead. It should conclude with the suicide of
Elesin, whose soul will accompany the king’s. Elesin sees a beautiful woman in the crowd and
demands one night of love with her before he dies. Iyaloja, the mother of the marketplace,
reluctantly agrees. Also in the village is the British colonial district officer, Pilking. He is well-
meaning but unable to understand or respect the Yoruba people. When Pilking hears of Elesin’s
intention to die, he has him arrested to prevent it. Soyinka makes it clear in his preface that this is
not a mere clash of cultures; this is not simply a case of the white colonialist interfering with
native culture. Elesin has failed to perform his duty, and his failure has galactic meaning.
Elesin’s son Olunde returns from England. He has heard of the king’s death. Olunde reveres
native culture and has had wide experience of Western culture. Ashamed to see his father’s
failure, he kills himself in Elesin’s place. When Elesin sees his son’s body, he takes his own life.
This suicide is the result of shame, however, not duty, and it cannot repair the bonds that have
been broken. The young bride, pregnant from her one night with Elesin, appears. She ritually
closes her husband’s eyes as Iyaloja says, “Now forget the dead, and forget even the living. Turn
your mind only to the unborn.”

Theme

Death and the King's Horseman focus on a ritual suicide. Soyinka himself has argued that
spiritual struggles including Elesin's attempts to carry out his duty by dying are at the heart of the
play, and judging from what characters like Olunde and Jane Pilkings have to say, death is a very
different animal in British and Yoruban cultures. For the British inhabitants of Oyo, death is to
be feared and avoided, whereas for the Yoruba, it seems like death is less scary and more
something to be embraced as right at certain times. And this difference in opinion? Well, it
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drives the whole plot. Principles for the Yoruba characters in Death and the King's Horseman,
being willing and able to confront death particularly when it's your duty to do so, as in Elesin's
case is kind of a big badge of honor. However, by contrast, the British administrators in the
region operate under the principle that death is something to be feared and prevented, so they end
up thinking that their duty is to stop Elesin from doing his. Moreover, Fear and courage are big
issues for Elesin and his community. As the late king's horseman, Elesin is duty-bound to carry
out a ritual suicide, and there's a lot of concern early on that Elesin's courage will falter at the
crucial moment. He ends up slipping in his resolve long enough for the British to intervene and
prevent the suicide. Meanwhile, the British administration is more afraid of being embarrassed
while the Prince is visiting than anything. The British seem to have the lion's share of the power
in the area, and they just don't understand the values and customs of the Yoruba who live there
which is a big problem. And the Yoruba, for their part, seem to feel pretty consistently
bombarded with British ideals, which is definitely the case on the day the play is set. So despite
Soyinka's warning, the story's constant preoccupation with foreignness and cultural conflict
means that, well, we're going to talk about it anyway.

Moreover, The British definitely think the Yoruba have cornered the market on primitive
behavior, but characters like Olunde beg to differ: the British exhibit their fair share of primitive
behaviors and customs. In Olunde's view, things like total war are barbaric, whereas it seems that
the British just find anything they don't understand to be "savage."

Genre

Tragedy: Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman contain elements of a Greek
tragedy. However, Soyinka has adeptly created a unique work of drama. Written in five acts, and
performed without interruption, the play contains dialogue interspersed with choral songs. Elesin
is a classical hero and olunde is a modern one. Like Shakespeare, O’Casey, Soyinka gets life as a
combination of delights and grief and sees the rank of an atmosphere of the play. Wole Soyinka
himself insists in an interview accompanying the play that the setting is secondary, and the
individuals are at the Centre of attention.

Construction and Rhythm

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Basically, play has five scenes. First and third are set in the market and second and fourth are
set in white men’s houses. The last scene is set in the prison cell, where the white and African
characters meet. Similarly, Olunde’s substitution of himself for the father in the ritual suicide
shows the deployment of Soyinka’s concept of the redemptive potency of tragedy. Thus
propositions, précis, rhythm and reviewing tale are usual elements but Soyinka’s use of some of
them and he reminds us of modern prose as well. The first scene exposes the hero, Elesin’s
unexpected wish for blending is shown as a possible threat when lyoloja asks him “you wish to
travel light” well the earth is yours. The second scene start when Amusa declines to talk to the
guise of the death worn by his superior about the death prepared in town. The crash is taking
over to the market in the third scene. In the fourth scene Pikling tell Olunde that “they have a
crisis”. Olunde self-sacrifice is a influential active share of tragedy, ending in Elesin’s suicide
and leaving the same feeling of pain as European tragedies do. The construction of the play
displays obviously Soyinka chains the tools of African theatre with those erudite from European
tragic literature for the effect of his work.

Method

The "European" and partially the varied acts use an accurate method, with the stated omission
of a masque, used at the beginning of the fourth scene. The description inclines to be completer
and more faintly drawn with the English characters, while the African ones are much more types
than complex human beings, with some exclusion in the case of Elesin, whose force as well as
weak points do appear. The sense and anger of lyaloja, the love and sorrow of the singer, the
energy and smartness of the girls and their mothers' knowledge are all touched as real. If we
compare the techniques of, we discover English conversation and less dramatic action with the
English. Nobody of them is a dominant figure, but particularly the Pilkingses, who signify a sure
type of the white man's view, are drawn by Soyinka with morality. The Africans, appear to
change most of the time with an internal rhythm that is easy and deliberate. Elesin and Olunde fit
to the reason of their angers and ideas of the world and are well ready. This passage shows that
Soyinka indulgences the Africans linked with the British in a system nearer to the
characterization of the European than to that of the African characters. The story force to be seen
as symbolic. . The death cult mask is a symbol. Dialogues and plot all cover symbolism. There is
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the Pilkingses' death mask dancing at the decorative ball at the very moment of Elesin's dance of
dying, and Pilkings placing Elesin in a past room for slaves whose bars are still complete.

Prose and Verse

The English express in prose. The African workers of the whites express in prose but far in the
other Africans’ speeches are said in verse. The last scene, usual in the English house, but learned
by the Africans, is said in prose. The African characters can talk in a down-to-earth style and
especially in the last part, numerous instants in which the rhythm and imagery of their prose have
much of the strength of the verse parts. The most visible feature of the African expression are
both in prose and in verse, and is the rich use of puzzles, proverbs, images and summaries, very
often based on the observation of the natural world. Soyinka's poetry produces from both the
African and the non-African poetic civilizations. Though reflecting his individual African
custom, Soyinka's use of poetry in drama is close to Shakespeare, Synge or Eliot. . For him, it is
a instrument of stating strength of feeling and of excavating the dramatic effect. The understated
note of this difference is silent by those who know the agreements of the Elizabethan drama.
Others will feel it impulsively, subconsciously perhaps, as a part of Soyinka's comment on the
two groups of his characters.

Language

Death and the King’s Horseman is a world-shaping work because it revived the English
language”. A work written in English but It drives from the informal English of the Pilkingses,
by some expert jargon, via Amusa's pidgin, to Olunde's refined English and to the self-
importantly calm idiom of the settlers at the English club. it is indicative that the African people
everywhere Elesin speak an English whose grammar is correct and leaves therefore no place for
mockery.

Music and Dance

Music, song and dance seem often in the play. The play suggests that the music itself is
representative of British colonialism in Nigeria in that the English themselves are out of place,
weak, and inappropriate in Nigeria. The Pilkingses tango, the Viennese waltz and the Rule
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Britannia, played by bands al the English ball, are symbols of relic and desolation in the
Europeans' use of music and dance, while for the Africans these way of appearance are life itself.

Conclusion

It is verified that the play's theme and method surpass the domain of outdated African theatre.
The plays directly previous and next Death and the King's Horseman are versions of European
drama, one of which is set outside Africa, and the next unique play is set in New York. The
usage of quasi-European sets and the occurrence of significant European types are not normal in
Soyinka's earlier plays. The past event imitate the exact state in which the play was inscribed in
the 1970, throughout Soyinka's extended stay in Europe, after he had assumed of it for some
years. In short this suggests a more extension of the excellent of settings and forms used for
African themes between the "African" and the "Western" in an exertion of literature is not
informal to pull.

Reference:
Soyinka, Wole. Death And the King's Horseman. London: Eyre Methuen, 1975.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZXo3StCwMc