A noteworthy issue in Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Knight concerns its introductory remarks and the impact they have on the meaning of the story. While Soyinka, in his preface, lashes out forcefully against readers who would turn his work into a depiction of “culture clash,” actually reading the story draws significant attention to the cultural tension. More specifically, the parts of the work dealing with culture raise interesting ideas about understanding and respect. Fueling a dilemma, Soyinka directs readers to instead see the "threnod essence" of the work, which deals with Elesin and the natives' perception of death and the transition to death, which constitutes the other significant part of the work. The resulting questions are whether the reader should ignore the work's "culture clash" tendencies, instead focusing exclusively on the "threnod essence", and consequently, whether ignoring the "culture clash" means that its themes of understanding and respect have no value. or value in the game. However, the problem can be reconciled and the two seemingly conflicting interpretations of the story can be integrated through a bridging theme of understanding. A theme that investigates human understanding finds itself running through both the central theme of the "trenodic" and that of the "cultural clash", unifying them and allowing them to coexist. Ultimately, this underlying theme of the work shows how all human beings struggle with understanding, both with each other and with death. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Understanding "Death and the King's Knight" by Wole Soyinka First, the theme of understanding is explored throughout the sections of the work involving the English settlers and their cultural tension (to avoid using the word "clash " which according to Soyinka erroneously presupposes an equality of cultures) with the native Yoruba. In Act 2, the district officer, Pilkings, and his wife, Jane, first address the theme of understanding when they dress up for a ball in native mortuary costumes. They see no problem, but Mr. Pilkings' employee, Amusa, a local policeman, is scared of them wearing the costumes, believing that it is bad for people to touch this fabric of death. “I think you have shocked his great pagan heart, bless him,” Jane says in reaction (p. 24). Their Christian background, which does not include knowledge of Nigerian spiritual life, did not prepare the Pilkings to understand, in Mr. Pilkings' words, "any mumbo-jumbo" (p. 24). While this situation may be seen on the surface as a "clash of cultures", there is also a deeper conflict present, involving understanding and respect for each other and for death. Later in the play, illustrating the lack of understanding, the Pilkings continue At the port, Jane, still wearing the costume, meets Elesin's educated son, Olunde. “I have now spent four years among your people,” says Olunde. “I discovered that you have no respect for what you don't understand” (p. 50). Jane is angry with his point of view, but they continue to visit him. Jane tells the story of a ship captain who sacrificed himself for the lives of many others. Olunde sees the captain's act of dying for others – which ironically parallels Elesin's death ritual – as admirable, but Jane cannot understand how it could be admirable. Olunde is frustrated by her inability to try to understand or at least respect the fact that someone else can have a vision of deathdifferent from his. You (Westerners) believe that everything that seems to make sense has been learned by you,” he says (p. 53). This scene seems well suited to a “clash of cultures” interpretation, but looking beyond the cultural context as he wishes Soyinka, can also be seen as an examination of the basic human understanding of death and the obstacles that humans encounter, both cultural (in the case of Jane) and spiritual. (in the case of Elesin and the natives). it is almost impossible for Jane, as a human being, to understand and respect these ideas that she has been conditioned towards. At the end of the story, when Mr. Pilkings is talking to Elesin in the cell, the theme of understanding is once again highlighted. .“You don't understand everything, but you know that tonight is the time when what should be must be realized,” Elesin tells Mr. Pilkings (p. 62), Elesin alludes to both his death ritual and the gap cultural, uniting threnode and cultural themes into one of understanding. Finally, Olunde, speaking to Pilkings - who he says has just returned from Elesin's death - summarizes a major aspect of the theme of understanding which concerns both cultural differences and death, saying: "by now you must know that there are things that cannot understand - or help" (p. 58). But the show is not completely - indeed it is only to a small extent - just a struggle for understanding on the part of the settlers. The greatest struggle is in the minds of Elesin and the Yoruba people as they try to understand death and the transition to death. In the first scene, this is especially evident when Elesin prepares for death and the Praise Singer launches a flood of questions aimed at finding answers to the mystery of death. “There is but one world in the spirit of our race,” says the Praisesinger. "If that world abandons its course and crashes on the boulders of the great void, what world will give us refuge?" (pg. 11) Here he is trying to understand what would happen if Elesin failed to complete his death ritual. He struggles to know what their fate would be. Later, as Elesin is further along in his transition to death, the praise singer asks him questions about what he is experiencing, hoping to gain understanding. “Is there now a streak of light at the end of the passage, a light that I dare not look at?” he asks. “It reveals what voices we have often heard, what touches we have often felt, what wisdoms have suddenly come into the mind when the wisest have shaken their heads and murmured: Can it not be done?” (page 44) And he continues: "Your eyelids are glassy like those of a courtesan, is this perhaps why you see the groom as dark and master of life?" (page 44 - 45) In these passages, the Praise Singer represents our "human" questions, and hopes that Elesin, in his half-earthly, half-celestial state, will help him understand. But Elesin cannot answer him and everything remains a mystery. Towards the end of the story, the theme of understanding emerges again when Elesin is reflecting on his failure to perform the death ritual. "I need understanding. I need understanding too," he says (p. 69). He complains about his weakness but also about his lack of understanding which led to his failure. “My will was smothered in the spittle of an alien race, and all because I had committed this blasphemy thinking that there might be the hand of the gods in the intervention of an outsider,” he says (p. 69). He realizes that his failure was linked to a misunderstanding, believing that perhaps the colonists' intervention was the work of the gods. He is frustrated with his weakness and the resulting catastrophe. Soon after this realization, Iyaloja reinforces the theme of understanding while arguing with Pilkings. “Child,” she says, “I have not come to aid your understanding..