In the introduction of his award winning play Death and the King’s Horseman, Wole Soyinka warns the reader of misinterpreting his play as an exploration of a clash between two cultures because the word “clash” would imply an equal and fair fight which as we all are aware of was not the case in colonial Nigeria.
Soyinka, instead, steers away from this conflict entirely and devotes his skills towards providing an honest and accurate portrayal of Yoruba culture and the threats it is exposed to with the arrival of the British. It is through this honest portrayal that we truly get to realize the perils of misrepresentation and how it contributed to the epistemic violence colonialism unfurled upon the colonized minds and their identities.
Soyinka based his play on a real life event which took place in 1946 when a district official attempted to stop the horseman of a Yoruba king from committing ritualized suicide. If this event is viewed as an isolated one and is bogged down with the biases and stereotypes perpetuated through the colonial gaze, it is not difficult to imagine how this event might have been reported and presented to the masses. Words like “savages”, “primitive” and “backwards” might have been thrown around and received with gasps of horror and disgust. To counter these reactions, Soyinka offers a closers view of how this event unfolded but from the perspective of the Yoruban people.
He gives Elesin Oba, the tragic hero of the play, the center stage who is armed with his powerful language that is littered with Yoruban proverbs. Burdened with the heroic task of sacrificing himself in order to keep the “world adrift”, Elesin exhibits hesitation towards his suicide. Throughout this looming threat, the European presence in this play is quite muted and serves as mere background noise at some points. Jane and Simon are seen preparing for a ball, dressing up in costumes as the entire world’s fate hangs in the balance. Their concerns are revealed to be almost childish and insignificant when placed with the knowledge that the world is under threat. By shedding light on these complexities, Soyinka inverts the narrative of the white savior employed by colonizers throughout history. For example in India the practice of sati was abolished framed within that narrative. However, in this case the natives are the ones that are attempting to rescue the colonizers from their own ignorance. Soyinka goes further in depth to reveal the turmoil and hesitance behind such a decision. Elesin does not mindlessly march towards his death, his doubts are constantly holding him back. Soyinka also embeds a mock-conversation between the Girls in the play to show how one’s individuality can be misconstrued and limited when it is presented in a reductive way. The conversation attempts to reduce a British individual to a babbling fool who goes on and on about the weather thus illustrating the consequences the misrepresentation of an unfamiliar subject can have.
Although our world is still adrift in the vast cosmic arena, Soyinka has managed to keep this particular moment in history from falling prey to misrepresentation.
Decoloniality and Decolonization 