The Strong Breed
(By Wole Soyinka)
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| Author | Wole Soyinka |
It is a tragedy that ends with an individual sacrifice for the sake of the communal benefit.
“The strong breed” tells the story of Emen, who lives in a strange village and has to sacrifice his life in order to save the village. So it’s a tragedy that ends with an individual sacrifice for the sake of the communal benefit. Sunma, who is deeply in love with Eman, was very possessive about her love. The behavioral patterns of these two characters are extremely different. Here Eman has been portrayed as Jesus Christ because he is both a teacher and a healer and sacrifices his life to an insensitive village.
The themes of the play are very much linked to the Yoruba culture. In this play, Soyinka presents a ritual based on Yoruba festival on the NewYear where the villagers sacrifice a ‘carrier’. Eman represents the whole victims of the evil ritual of sacrificing “carrier”. This type of ritual and customs can see in different communities of the world, mostly among the tribal communities.
It is a highly symbolic play. 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. 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.
There is an undercurrent of repressive ideology operating beneath the ritual.According to Althuser"Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence". According to Althusser, by contrast, ideology does not "reflect" the real world but "represents" the "imaginary relationship of individuals" to the real world; the thing ideology (mis)represents is itself already at one remove from the real.
Sati,The caste system in Kerala, Mannappedi or Pulappedi were the major repressive tools in the post-colonial India till 1980. At that time the socalled hegimonised Hindu’s are the dominant figures. They exploited the minority for theirown prosperity.”
