Suicide In Death And The King's Horseman

In a culture, groups of people usually stick to and successfully carry out their roles. In Death and The King’s Horseman, this bears true for most of the characters. On the Yoruban side, the Praise-Singer and Iyaloja do their part by readying the ritual. On the English side, the District Officer and his helpers complete theirs by successfully arresting Elesin. Even though two deaths occur rather than one, they still stick to their anti-ritual suicide belief. In between all of these cultural successes, Elesin is singled out as being the only character that fails due to his inability to commit suicide.. Through highlighting only Elesin’s failure, Wole Soyinka is attempting to prove that failures in cultural identity do not happen in the whole
tribe but rather in individuals.
The way that Elesin fails in upholding his culture’s tradition is by desiring aspects of life rather than seeing his duty of death. He is distracted by a young woman which ultimately leads him into procrastination against his suicide. This then allows time for the District Officer to perform his task of arresting Elesin. It is evident that Elesin’s wants are more important than his culture. Also, that his cultural identity falters at the act or even thought of sex, something that he seems to hold higher than his community’s beliefs. Soyinka proves with this that all it takes is one human’s own choices to compromise the culture of the people. He then uses the character of Olunde as a way to further this idea of individuality in a cultural identity failure.