Death and the King’s Horseman Themes

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…

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…

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…