Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests: Crime, Punishment and Redemption

Abstract

Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests was modeled on Yoruba New Year festival that included purificatory rites in which people helped one another to confess and to begin the New Year afresh. In the play there are ample references of crimes: murders, exploiting the subordinates, sabotage, bribery and extortions, sexual politics, environmental plunder etc. But as the play is oriented to provide a positive impact to the audience as well as the readers, it is shaped on giving way to purgation. The cleansing of the soul is done with an organic orientation to the themes of crime, punishment and redemption. Different layers of punishment are provided to the individual living characters on stage like Rola, Demoke and Adenebi and by extension to all the Yoruba people who bear guilt of their past lives indicating legacies of colonial identity and its impact on the present situation. The play finally aims at the theme of redemption serving all the aesthetic requirements and anticipating a positive future for Nigeria. Crime, punishment and redemption – these three terms forming a single phrase carries a powerful association to Christianity. Here, in this paper the focus will be on the interplay of the Christian ideal of the crime, punishment and redemption cycle and the primitive ideal of the same in the Yoruba culture.