THE STRONG BREED
EE4 黃任禎 9711103
Wole Soyinka (13.July.1934)
Nigerian Writer
Notable especially as a playwright and poet
Awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature
The first African in Africa to be so honored
History
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After becoming chief of the Cathedral of Drama at
the University of Ibadan, Soyinka became more politically
active.
Following the military coup of January 1966, he secretly and
unofficially met with the military governor in
the Southeastern town of Enugu (August 1967), to try to
avert civil war.
As a result, he had to go into hiding. He was imprisoned for
22 months as civil war ensued between the federal
government and the Biafrans.
Though refused materials such as books, pens, and paper,
he still wrote a significant body of poems and notes criticizing
the Nigerian government.
During his imprisonment, he composed The Strong Breed, it
were produced in the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York.
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The Strong Breed is one of the best known tragedy plays
by Wole Soyinka.
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Although it is only a short play among Wole Soyinka’s plays, it
makes audience contemplate and enjoy every minute from
the beginning to the end.
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I think the plot of The Strong Breed is kind of step-by-step
play. We couldn’t think directly of any possibilities that what
would happen next in the play, so you’ll need to keep reading
and find out what is going on, but while reading, it would
make me keep thinking back a lot.
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So it isn’t just like the kind of comedy play that serves as a
recreation to kill time, it’s a tragedy that ends with an
individual sacrifice for the sake of the communal benefit, with
a hint of Obatalan resolution in the lingering sense of
balanced alternatives, but I have read most of the other plays
in “Collected Plays 1” do not end in either of these ways.
Story Abstract
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I think the two characters that impressed me the most in
this play were Eman and Sunma.
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The behavioral patterns of these two characters are
extremely different.
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Sunma, who is deeply in love with Eman, was very
possessive about her love.
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The hero in this play is Eman, he is a stranger who has
come to this particular village to act as a teacher and
share his education, because Eman flees from the village
elders as he is going to be sacrificed and has to be
chased around the village for most part of the night.
Story Abstract
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He noticed that his father was a "carrier” and that he has fled
the family tradition of symbolic sacrifice, he accepts his past
and discovers, “I am very much my father's son, one of the
strong breed” who must take these responsibilities upon
themselves, this is my favorite line.
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The most tension part is during the night of the purification
ceremony, the sacrifice has to be carried out before midnight for
it to effectively cleanse the villagers before the New Year
begins.
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Finally, the elders decide to set a trap for Eman. They know that
he is thirsty and will head for the river, so they dig a hole and
cover it with twigs. Sure enough, Eman goes to the river and
falls into the trap and get caught at the sacred trees and killed,
ultimately fulfilling his destiny as a carrier even though he is in a
strange land.
Observation
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The Strong Breed doesn’t have complicated relationships
in the play, thus it will make audiences to think of the plot
or storyline more.
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Although some critics point out that, on Wole Soyinka’s
stage traditional ritual practices may be positive or
negative, beneficial or exploitative, repressive or
subversive in the uses to which they lend themselves and
the interpretations put upon them, and they are defined by
these extraneous elements.
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They may sanctify evasion, brutality, or corrupt inertia,
everywhere on the Soyinkan stage, but most intensely in
the esoteric plays, that hallmark of the ritual process, the
sense of suspension of ordinary reality and of a deferment
of or removal from the normal time order.
Observation
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However I think the meaningful elements such as family
relationship, self identity, and death issue are enough for
a short play, and not to mention that this tragedy play is to
make people depressed or sorrowed.
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Sometimes it don’t need meaning, reason, to explain a
thing, the play is exist to make people whoever sees it
and feel the fact that how people in the story survive in
that kind of cultural environment, and I think that’s is
enough.
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As long the story is realistic and amusing to me, not
artificial and mechanical. We can see his genius in how
he complicated the simple story and made it more
interesting and engrossing that it is still very popular and
highly symbolic in present day.
Personal Opinion
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A good plot should not involve too many exaggeration or
coincidences.
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It seems like Wole Soyinka was reluctant to unravel the
mystery, he keep puts off the final moment.
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Audiences might not know anything until the very end of the
story, and it will not bring surprise to the audiences.
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While reading through the script for the first time, I have to be
honest, almost half of the play is sometimes hard to understand,
but maybe there are audiences especially love those parts.
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From this tragedy play I could experience a totally different
theatre – African Theatre. Unlike theatres that I’ve studied
before so far, in fact, Soyinka makes significant departures from
Western tragic models.
Comparison with the World’s
Greatest Tragedies
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As we knew from the text book’s Chapter 3 –
“The Play Script” that the tragedy is a form associated
especially with ancient Greece and Elizabethan England.
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Two of the world’s greatest tragedies, Sophocles’ Oedipus
the King and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
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Few plays during the past century have been called
tragedies, perhaps because, as some critics have argued,
we no longer consider human beings capable of the kind
of heroic action associated with the great tragic heros.
Comparison with the World’s
Greatest Tragedies
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The play seems to suggest that death is a crucial marker in the
struggle between individual will and community wholeness. The
crisis brings back memories.
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While checking the pedigree of Eman’s family, we can identify
that his father was also a carrier and sacrificed his life. So
Eman has fled the family tradition of symbolic sacrifice.
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Thus, in my personal opinion, I think that Eman of The Strong
Breed is like Oedipus, struggling against an inescapable
personal destiny but forced back into its fulfillment by a
perverse twist of events and by deep compelling needs within
his own character.
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Furthermore, as in Western tragedy, the play shifts from the
social and political theater of action to the growth of the
individual consciousness into self-knowledge.
Themes
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The Strong Breed develops a number of themes common
in Wole Soyinka’s plays, the conflict between the
traditional and the modern.
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The ongoing need to save society from its tendency to
follow custom and mistaken beliefs unquestioningly, the
special individual, who through dedication and vision
awakens the people and leads them toward better ways,
even though he may become a victim of the society he
seeks to benefit.
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Wole Soyinka may also be suggesting that one cannot
escape tradition and therefore must come to grip with it.
Epilogue
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In a nut shell, I personal think that what Wole Soyinka’s
plays, form a bridge between traditional and contemporary
performance.
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Just like the themes of the play are very much linked to
the Yoruba culture. In this play, Wole Soyinka presents a
ritual based on Yoruba festival on the NewYear where the
villagers sacrifice a “carrier”.
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Eman represents the whole victims of the evil ritual of
sacrificing “carrier”.
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This type of ritual and customs can see in different
communities of the world, mostly among the tribal
communities.