Death, Power and Cultural Translation in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman

Abstract

Following Soyinka’s warning in his Author’s Note that Death and the King’s Horseman should not be read as portraying “the clash between old values and the new ways, between western methods and African traditions”, many critics have confined themselves to considering the metaphysical dimension of the play within the Yoruba cultural context. That way they have located its tragic effect in what they see as Elesin’s lack of a strong moral will to carry out his expected public duty - to commit ritual suicide. However, this article argues that in the play, Soyinka has turned death into a space of power contestation, not only between the colonizer and the colonized, but also between the essentialist and syncretist elements within the Yoruba cultural order. From this perspective, both Elesin and his son Olunde are seen as enabling agents in Oyo society’s movement towards an African modernity.