Essays on Wole Soyinka

Modernism in literature is said to have its roots in the late 19th century after World War I that took place from 1914 to 1919. Modernism in literary work is a shift from values, religion and tradition to isolation, identity crisis, fragmentation and relative truth. Modernism was catalyzed by World War I, as it led to mistrust in the ability of existing institutions to solve societal problems and maintain order in society. It also changed people’s perception of the world and society. World War I therefore influenced how writers wrote not just in terms of content of their ...

There are so many factors and fronts from which an autobiography can be criticized. Ake: The Years of Childhood is an autobiography written and based on the childhood encounters of Wole Soyinka. It highlights the enchanting accounts of the author’s childhood experience in a small town of Abeokuta located in Western Nigeria. While most childhood experience exhibits various similarities, the region of child development highly affects one’s childhood experience. This autobiography presents the childhood experiences exhibited across the region of West Africa. While these encounters may not represent Africa as a whole, there are certain childhood encounters ...

Wole Soyinka’s Death and the Kings Horseman

Prior to the European invasion in Africa, Africans had varied ways of life under their cultural setting. Some communities had formalised types of governments which were being ruled by kings while other communities had no centralised government. They practiced their own religion and had their own economic structures which comprised of skilled artists who could make masks sculptures, statutes of wood, bronze and gold, hunters and gatherers and also farmers. However, during colonisation, the African people’s way of life was subjected to numerous external changes that left traces in how we nowadays think and act. The imposition of ...

Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat is a poem written by Gwendolyn Brooks and published in her famous collection of poems known as The Bean Eaters in 1960. Set in Bronzeville, where the poet is believed to have grown up, the poem narrates of the experiences of a black woman looking for a job as a housecleaner. The Bronzeville lady undergoes humiliation at the hands of a white family, and this is what the poem is all about; exposing some misconceptions the society might have on some of its members. On the other hand, Telephone Conversation is a poem written by Wole Soyinka, and it depicts a ...

Dilemma over embracing or escaping from Yoruba culture

One is likely to encounter cases of death in a society comprised of different groups of people who are not willing to understand each others’ cultural practices and customs. Such is the case in Wole Soyinka’s Death and a King’s Horseman. Soyinka does a brilliant job using different layers of conflict as he tells the story of Elesin, who is prevented from fulfilling his duty of his ritual suicide by the British, who view the custom as illegal and barbaric while the colonized Yoruba view his suicide as not only a tribal obligation, but a world’s obligation to maintain peace between ...