Detail summary about the road written by wole soyinka
Answers
The Road - Wole Soyinka: Summary
Introduction:
The Road is a very complex play, a combination of comedy and tragedy, very much Shakespearean in its make-up. The play shows the satirical and spiritual attitude of the dramatist. The subject of death, presented in The Road is found in an early poem ‘Death in the Dawn’. Another event which makes Soyinka to write this poem is the death of his friend Segun Awolowo in an accident.
The Setting and the Characters:
The play is set along a road, the road from life to death. The cast is a superbly seeded gang, including the driver of a passenger-truck No Danger No Delay; his passenger – tout and driver’s mate, Samson, a Captain of Thugs called Say Tokyo Kid; and a splendidly pliable policeman, Particulars Joe; and brooding over all with menacing benevolence, Professor, proprietor of the driver’s haven (AKSIDENT STORE – ALL PARTS AVAILEBUL), a dismissed lay-reader, but also the oppressively strange death-in-life figure.
The Subject-Matter of the Play: Death:
Everyone in the play is the servant, or agent, or priest, or student of death. The road itself is ruled by Ogun, the god of war and death and roads. Road accidents, which Professor, the missionary of death, helps to arrange by removing road signs from dangerous points of the road, are Ogun’s High Masses. Drivers are the constant companions of death. Death is described as a harvest. “Death is the select harvest of a faithful gleaner”, says the Professor, using an agricultural metaphor.
The Theme and Action of the Play:
The play is prefaced by Alagemo, a poem, which provides clue to the play. “Alagemo is simply, a religious cult of flesh dissolution”, the dance in the play symbolizing suspension of death. The thems of the work is, life conceived of as a movement towards dissolution. The action of the play is, arrest of time at the point where man is dissolving into the underworld. The characters play their distinctive roles in the play, whose title is suggestive, of the hazardous road in a stifling and a corrupting world. This bleak and difficult subject is enriched by a mulch of religious myth, Yoruba custom and tradition.
Significance of the Characters in The Road:
All the characters in the play are associated with some religion – either Yoruban - the local one, or Christianity – the foreign one.
Answer:
"The Road" by Wole Soyinka is a play that discusses about the nature of death. It incorporates myths of various Yoruba folklore and cultural artifacts. The preface of the play includes a poem about the Yoruba traditional dance.
Explanation:
Famous Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka wrote her play "The Road" with death as it's central topic. Here, he shows the daily lives of drivers on a Nigerian road. One of the main characters is "Professor". He owns a store on the road that sells pare parts of vehicles. Ironically, he is the one causing accidents, then supplying the spare parts.This is how he gets his business done. His money results from the deaths he himself caused. The other characters are an ex driver Kotonu, Samson, Salubi, Murano, Joe the police inspector and Say Tokyo Kid, a gangster.
The play begins with Salubi and Samson talking about various issues from the police to the church. The road they are on symbolizes the road from life to death. Professor would trick drivers by displacing warning signs, thus luring them to their deaths. The god of death, Ogun rules the road, leading drivers to their death which is his primary role. He is the mechanism through which the cycle of life and death works, keeping the cycle running. Everyone will someday have to go through death anyway.
This play is also important for the writer explores the theme of death and our understanding of it. The writer lost his friend Segun Awolowo in a car accident, which inspires him to write this play. All the characters are somehow connected to the theme of death, playing different roles all leading to the destination "death". The character of 'Professor' is also metaphorical for our blindness to danger. We all seem to ignore the dangers of lives and instead try to stall or postpone it. We are unaware of the importance of our existence, we are just so caught up with the various issues of life that we hardly give time to ponder about life's frailties.