So which is good and which is evil: The British Occupants or the members of the Yoruba tribe? Perhaps it depends on how you were raised or more importantly, what you were raised to believe is right and wrong. With this play, I, like the prodigal son, Olunde, find myself caught inside a seemingly inescapable Catch-22. This is because pros AND cons exist on either side of the conflict.
When the British began to colonize Africa, some had very decent honorable intentions, acting as educators and Christian Missionaries to the African tribesmen/women. But I also believe that the British government's occupation of African tribal territories by way of force, violence, and enslavement is beyond reproach. On the other side of things, The Yoruba tribe appear to be a very spiritual, peaceful people who respect the African and its native inhabitants. However, I am a Christian and believe suicide, although, a very real result of depression and hopelessness, is wrong and not a feasible option for leaving this world.
Olunde is representative of these conflicting ideals. As both a functioning member of British society and the son of a Yoruba Elesin ("horseman"). As a result, he is torn between his ambition to heal the sick as a doctor and his responsibilities as the heir to the tribe's Elesin. He seems to be alright with the fact that his father is fulfilling his honorable duty as the Yoruba king's Horseman: by killling himself, Elesin Oba hopes to rejoin his king in the afterlife. We see this at the costume ball, when he urges Jane Pilkings to talk to her husband , in the hope that the British officer will make the decision not to prevent Elesin Oba from fulfilling his ritual. Yet, we also see his reluctance to take his father's place as Elesin.
When Elesin Oba is arrested by Pilkings and his police, Olunde is forced to make his choice. At first, with his public rejection and disowning of his father, we are led to believe that Olunde has rejected his African heritage and will return to England. But later when the women from the market place bring his body to the prison wrapped in a burial shroud, his choice of home and responsibility becomes quite clear. The question now is did this smooth over the conflict between the Yoruba and the British government? Or did this just exacerbate the problem further?
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You raise questions about an important element of this play, Evan: faith and spirituality. I think it's important to note that there are African characters that have been converted to the Christian and Muslim faiths represented, here, in addition to the Yoruba and English characters. I wonder, though, if all readers would consider the work of Christian missionaries as benign. That is, in Soyinka's note before the play, he talks about the inequities of power between nations, but I'm not sure this only has to do with the force and violence you mention. That is, why did the missionaries think Africans needed to be educated or converted? Many people think colonization is not just a matter of economic and material resources, it involves an attempted cultural domination of one belief or practice over another. In other words, is Christianity really "naturally" superior to the belief system of the Yoruba? Was the system of education the missionaries brought imposing European cultural values on the people who already have a system of education of their own?
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