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Be sure to read the author's note, because if you don't, you might take it as an East vs. West, colonial vs. tribal, new vs. old story as it would appear on first reading. But in his note, Soyinka states that the "threnodic essence" of the work is a theme even more universal: "the numinous passage which links all: transition." Change is indeed common to us all, and as my mother-in-law points out, change is usually perceived as bad. Yet change is something we all must come to terms with, and since one of literature's great benefits is to act as a mental dress rehearsal for life, this lean play (acessible on first reading, yet rich enough to reread) should find a place on every thoughtful reader's shelf.
The university-educated Soyinka (as one can infer from the author's note) has quite the erudite vocabulary, yet the prose style of Death and the King's Horseman reminded me more of ancient Greek tragedy in translation than anything else: simple yet poetic phrasing, and the homespun proverbial sayings of a pre-industrial age. What struck me as an information-age Westerner was how many of these Yoruba sayings (being related to animals or farming) were hard to relate to; an incidental lesson of this book was how detached from the natural world I've become. Visiting nature for recreation isn't the same as having your livelihood dependent on it.
Another aspect of this play that happens to be particularly interesting in juxtaposition to the film juggernaut of Avatar is that neither the Nigerian characters nor the English are portrayed as completely right or wrong, sympathetic or not. Sure, the English come off as somewhat ignorant intruders, yet they act in good faith; conversely, Elesin, the protagonist, initially appears heroic but as events unfold he grows less so. Whereas in Avatar the modern Westerners are evil caricatures and the Na'vi noble savages, in Soyinka's work matters are more nuanced--more like real life.
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