Death and the kings horsmen : giving up the battle

Death and the King's Horseman: Giving up the Battle From the Western perspective, it is hard to understand ritual suicide as anything positive or helpful to the living. There almost seems to be no Western equivalent to the "duty" of Elesin in Death and the King's Horseman. However, Wole Soyinka gives us a comparable situation in Jane's description of a captain blowing up a ship to save the people on the shore. It's a moment …

…see from this small piece in the book that Soyinka is continually forcing us to recognize that the Western way is not the only way. By presenting us with situations that we cannot understand at first, we are led to understanding only by thinking through what happens. While it might seem at first that the Yoruba are giving up the battle, they are really keeping their high ground without stooping to fight with the English.