Life and Death Theme Analysis

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 local district officer, discovers that Elesin intends to commit suicide while the prince of England is visiting. Through Pilkings's attempts to stop Elesin from committing suicide, the play begins to explore the function and the cultural significance of death, both for the Yoruba people and for the English. Ultimately, the play makes it very clear that death is something different for every culture—and that interrupting one culture's way of thinking about the relationship between life and death can have disastrous consequences.

For Elesin, the past month has been a time of transition. The death of the king a month before means that Elesin has had thirty days to prepare for his own journey toward death and has therefore been existing in a liminal, transitional state. Despite this—and despite Elesin's assurance to both his praise-singer and Iyaloja, the mother of the market, that he plans to follow through with tradition and die—the way that Elesin behaves and is described in the stage notes suggests that he's more connected to life than he might think. This, Soyinka suggests in his introduction, is the true conflict of the play: that Elesin is too entrenched in the land of the living to successfully cross over to the land of the dead to join his king.

The most significant way that Soyinka demonstrates how connected Elesin is to life is through his desire for material and carnal pleasures. Elesin teases the women in the marketplace, which results in them dressing him in colorful, elaborate clothing, something that Elesin clearly takes great pleasure in. He also insists on marrying in the hours before his death for no other reason than that the bride, the young woman he sees walking through the market, is extremely beautiful and he wants to have sex with her. Both Iyaloja and the praise-singer suggest that this is a problem, whatever Elesin has to say on the matter. Iyaloja cautions Elesin to make sure that his "seed doesn't attract a curse"—in other words, she tries to warn Elesin that participating in the marriage ceremonies so close to his death might tie him to the world of the living to the point where dying could become difficult when the time comes. Ultimately, she's right to be concerned: Elesin falters in his attempt to die and later, halfheartedly blames his new bride for tempting him. With this, Elesin admits that he did love life too much, even as he regrets that he wasn't able to end it.

Despite Elesin's struggles to end his life, the way that the Yoruba characters speak about death casts death as something not only inevitable, but honorable—especially when, as was supposed to be Elesin's case, a person has the ability to prepare for and embrace their coming death. This also suggests that life can be more fulfilling when a person lives knowing full well that death is on its way. This contrasts dramatically with the way that the English characters think of life and death. Pilkings believes in a Christian ideal of the sanctity of all life; thus, Elesin's suicide is something blasphemous and unthinkable, rather than a way for Elesin to exercise agency over how and when his spirit crosses over to the land of the dead. Interestingly, Elesin's love of life and the way he goes about enjoying his life suggest that even if he does still adhere to Yoruba beliefs dictating that he must die, he might have more in common with Pilkings than Elesin is comfortable admitting. Indeed, even Pilkings brings up a Yoruba proverb suggesting that nobody dies entirely willingly, no matter their station in life or their belief system. With this, Pilkings suggests that Elesin's hesitation is normal and understandable even within the context of his own belief system, and even if it has disastrous consequences.

As appalling as Pilkings finds Elesin's ritual suicide attempt and as catastrophic as Elesin's failure is for Iyaloja and the Yoruba people, more horrifying for everyone—Pilkings, Elesin, and the reader/audience alike—is Elesin's successful suicide behind bars after he sees the body of his oldest son, Olunde, who took Elesin's place in the spiritual world as the king's horseman when Elesin failed to die. Being refused his original, planned death robs Elesin of all dignity and power. While dying as planned would've meant that he'd be honored by both the living and the dead, not being able to die dishonors Elesin in the eyes of everyone and makes it so that the tradition of the king's horseman cannot continue in the futures of the living, given that Olunde (who would've been the next horseman) is also dead. Dishonored in both life and death, Elesin kills himself with the chains that bind him, and Iyaloja tells Pilkings that Pilkings is the one to blame, as he "usurp[s] the vestments of our dead, yet believe[s] that the stain of death will not cling to [him]." With this, Iyaloja suggests that the true crime committed by both Elesin and Pilkings is not accepting the inevitability of death and not allowing others to greet death on their own terms.