RE-SCRIPTING MASCULINITY IN WOLE SOYINKA’S DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN: TRADITION AS TRAP OR TOOL?

Abstract

Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman has often been treated within the prisms of cultural conflict and colonial  disruption; both treatments are germane and elucidate essential aspects of the play. This study chooses to adopt a different
trajectory to argue that central to the play’s tragedy is a crisis that wells from deep in the psyche of the community as well as the principal characters: a crisis of masculinity. Using R.W. Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity and Todd Reeser’s masculinity as a fluid performance, interspersed with psychoanalytic assessments from Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Esther Harding, and postcolonial interpretation from Frantz Fanon, this study examines the distinction between Elesin and his son, Olunde. Where Elesin evinces a performative, hegemonic masculinity, with all the sensory pleasure and communal validation that comes with it, which becomes a quicksand that emiserates him and his community when he fails, Olunde re-scripts masculinity as a conscious tool that results from a wielding of agency that is devoid of blind devotion, but imbued with intellect, resoluteness, and belief. The study concludes that the play critiques masculinity, both internal and external, and asserts that the value placed on tradition is
eventuated in authentic, liberating and selfless service and honour.