Life and Death
The action of Death and the King's Horseman begins a month after the king's death. Per Yoruba religious tradition, Elesin, the titular horseman (a title that signifies that he's in service to the king and shares many of the same rights and perks, but without the same responsibilities), must commit ritual suicide so that he can accompany the king to the afterlife. Things become complicated, however, when the Englishman Simon Pilkings, the…
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Women and Power
While Death and the King's Horseman isn't overtly about relationships between men and women, observing the way that all the play's women act and are treated by the men around them offers extensive insight into how women function in Yoruba society and English colonial society alike. In both cultures, women are treated as keepers of culture and as the interpreters of their own cultures for others, suggesting that while women in the play may not…
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Duty and Collective Responsibility
Death and the King's Horseman is extremely interested in exploring what it means to be dutiful and honorable—to oneself, to one's people, and to one's spiritual beliefs. Given that duty is what drives Elesin in his attempts to commit suicide and is also what drives Pilkings's attempts to stop Elesin, it's worth considering the ways in which the respective duties of these two men and their two cultures mirror each other. Though the play…
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Colonialism
In the introduction to the play, Soyinka says outright that it's inappropriate and reductive to consider Death and the King's Horseman only as a play about a "clash of cultures" and the role of colonialism in Nigeria. Instead, he encourages readers and prospective directors to focus on the conflict that Elesin experiences as he fails to follow through with his suicide for a host of other reasons not related to Pilkings's attempts to stop…
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