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 ...