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Act 4 Summary of Death and the King’s Horseman

Act 4 is the longest and most intellectually complex act in Death and the King’s Horseman. It shifts the setting to the Residency (the home of the British colonial administrator) during a masque ball. This act juxtaposes the superficiality of the British social world with the profound spiritual crisis occurring in the Yoruba world, and it introduces Olunde, Elesin’s son, who serves as a critical bridge between the two cultures.

Act 4 of Death and the King’s Horseman opens in a corridor of the Residency, where a fancy-dress ball is underway to honour the visiting British Prince. The atmosphere is described as having a “tawdry decadence” typical of a “far-flung but key imperial frontier.” The local police band plays a terrible version of “Rule Britannia,” and the guests bow to the Prince.

The Resident (the high-ranking official) pulls Simon Pilkings aside. He is annoyed by reports of a “riot” (the market women) and worries it will disturb the Prince. He criticises Pilkings for letting things get out of hand but is distracted by the Pilkings’ egungun costumes, which he finds amusingly “exotic,” unaware of their sacred significance. Pilkings assures him the situation is under control, though he is secretly panicking because it is midnight—the time the ritual suicide was supposed to occur.

After Simon leaves to check on the arrest of Elesin, Jane Pilkings remains behind and is startled by Olunde, Elesin’s eldest son. Olunde has returned unannounced from medical school in England to bury his father.

Jane expects Olunde to be shocked by her wearing the ancestral mask. To her surprise, he is calm, noting that after four years in England, he has learned that the British “have no respect for what (they) do not understand.”

They discuss a British captain who blew up his own ship (and himself) to save a harbour during the war. Jane calls it “morbid” and “nonsense,” but Olunde finds it “inspiring” and an “affirmative commentary on life.” This establishes a parallel between Western self-sacrifice for the “greater good” and the Yoruba ritual suicide, which Jane cannot see.

Olunde criticises the British hypocrisy regarding death. He notes that the British send millions to die in the war (mass suicide) but label it “strategic victory,” yet they condemn his father’s singular sacrifice as “barbaric.”

Olunde reveals he has returned not to stop his father, but to bury him. He accepts the ritual as essential for the community’s well-being. Suddenly, the distant drumming stops and changes rhythm. Olunde listens and calmly declares, “It is all over… my father is dead.” He believes Elesin has successfully committed suicide. Jane screams at him, calling him a “savage” and “callous” for his lack of emotional display.

Simon Pilkings returns, shouting orders. To everyone’s shock, Elesin Oba enters in handcuffs, alive and struggling. He has been arrested before he could complete the ritual.

The climax of the act—and the play’s turning point—occurs when Elesin sees his son. Elesin looks at Olunde, desperate for acknowledgment. Olunde stares at his father with cold devastation. When Elesin cries out “Olunde?”, his son replies with a crushing rejection: “I have no father, eater of left-overs.” Olunde walks away, leaving Elesin sobbing in the dust, a broken man who has failed his cosmic duty.

Analysis of Act 4

Soyinka contrasts the noisy, artificial world of the Residency with the solemnity of the ritual in the previous act. The British are playing dress-up in a “tawdry” imitation of power (the bad music, the “fancy dress”), while the Yoruba are engaged in a life-and-death struggle for cosmic balance. The egungun costumes worn by the Pilkingses is a visual representation of colonial arrogance—they have reduced a sacred power to a party trick.

Olunde disrupts the colonial narrative. The Pilkingses expect him to be a grateful, “civilised” native who rejects his “primitive” culture. Instead, Olunde is sophisticated, philosophical, and more perceptive than his colonisers.

Olunde compares the British captain’s suicide to his father’s ritual to expose Jane’s cultural bias. Jane views the captain’s death as heroism because it saved lives (physical), but views Elesin’s death as “feudal” because it saves the universe (metaphysical). In the same manner, Jane accuses Olunde of being “callous” because he does not weep. This highlights the British inability to understand Yoruba mourning, which focuses on duty and continuity rather than individual loss.

The tragedy in this act is not death, but life. In the Yoruba worldview presented here, Elesin’s survival is a catastrophe. By stopping the ritual, Pilkings believes he has “saved” a man; in reality, he has destroyed him. This is evident in Olunde’s depiction of his father as “eater of left-overs.” This insult devastates Elesin. It implies that Elesin is a scavenger who held onto life after his time had passed. He has consumed the world’s pleasures (the “feast”) but refused to pay the bill (death).

We also witness the reversal of roles in this act, executed by a structural irony. Simon, who thought he was “saving” Olunde from a backward culture in the past, is now being lectured by Olunde on the barbarism of World War II. Olunde, the westernised doctor, becomes the defender of tradition. Elesin, the keeper of tradition, becomes the symbol of its failure.

The sight of the “strong” father in chains, pitied by the “weak” white woman and rejected by the “lost” son, signifies the total collapse of the indigenous authority in the face of colonial intervention.

Related:

• Act 1 Summary and Analysis of Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka
• Act 2 to 3 Summary and Analysis of Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka
• Act 5 Summary and Analysis of Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka

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