DKH

DKH

1. Characters

   • Elesin: relishes earthly desires/full of self-confidence/ attachment to material pleasures/corruption of will and endangers society
   • Iyaloja: "mother" of the market/traditionalist/ does anything for Elesin that does not transgress her world/ upholder of the Yoruba values
   • Olunde: Mouthpiece of the play - brings the truth and light/understands both culture/ dressed in European suit- immediate visual impression as a hybrid
   • Simon: Utterly certain that British values are superior to anything else the world has to offer/ shallow/ little understanding and appreciation for his own culture (mocks christianity)/prime concern in the entire play is to impress the prince
   • Jane: curbs her husbands's wilder excesses of insensitivity/ sensible but bound by a set of narrow values/ understands her culture through secondary information
   • Amusa: "Amuser"/ inhabits neither the Yoruba nor western world/ sold his manhood to colonialists/ accorded little respect by either side

2. Settings

   • 1st/3rd scene: market, 2nd/4th scene: white man's house, 5th scene: prison cell improvised in Residency
     • Audience compare different social experiences
     • Improvised jail as an tragic irony: former room for slaves used to keep Elesin (reduced to being a slave from being a dignified King's Horseman)
   • No intervals
     • Audience have to be fully engaged or try to keep up with the play, treats audience as outsider

3. Language

   • English prose vs Yoruba's verses
     • Exception of Olunde: only local image is calling his father "eater of white left overs", a slip of the local idiom, subconscious behaviour shows that he realizes his roots
     • Market girls: used English language to ridicule english ways