A Dance of the Forests by Wole Soyinka

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A Dance of the Forest

Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests is a complex, surrealist drama first performed in October 1960 as part of the Nigerian Independence celebrations. The play serves as a profound critique of the tendency to idealize the past, warning a newly independent nation that history is often marked by the same patterns of corruption and violence found in the present.

Plot and Structure

The play begins when the "Human Community" summons their illustrious ancestors for the "Gathering of the Tribes". Instead of the noble figures expected, Aroni (a forest spirit) sends two "restless dead"—a captain and his pregnant wife—who were victims of injustice centuries prior in the court of Mata Kharibu. The living are repulsed by these "obscenities" and shun them.

Forest Head, disguised as the human Obaneji, leads four specific living individuals—Demoke (a carver), Rola (a courtesan), Adenebi (a council orator), and Agboreko (an elder)—into the forest. There, they are forced to confront their past incarnations from eight centuries earlier, revealing that their current moral failings are echoes of ancient crimes.

Themes

The Cycles of History: The play rejects the "idealized figures of the tribal imagination," suggesting that history repeats its cruelties.

Atonement and Judgment: The central conflict involves the dead seeking judgment and the living desperately trying to avoid it.

Sacrilege and Nature: Through the character of Demoke, who carved a sacred tree and caused his apprentice's death, Soyinka explores the tension between human artistic ambition and divine/natural law.

Key Characters

1. Humans (The Town Dwellers)

These characters are the living representatives of the "Human Community" who have gathered to celebrate the "Gathering of the Tribes".

• Demoke (The Carver): A servant of Ogun and a master of wood and iron, he was chosen to carve the commemorative totem. He suffers from a fear of heights; in a fit of dizzying envy, he plucked his apprentice, Oremole, from the sacred araba tree to his death. In an ancient life, he was the Court Poet.

• Rola (The Courtesan): Also known as Madame Tortoise, she is a notorious figure who drives men to "madness and self-destruction". She is wealthy from her "investors" (lovers) and remains unrepentant, viewing her past victims as fools who "invested foolishly". In the past, she was a capricious Queen.

• Adenebi (Council Orator): A corrupt political official obsessed with "empires" and "glory". He accepted a substantial bribe to increase a lorry’s capacity, leading to a crash (the "Incinerator") that killed sixty-five people. He is the reincarnation of the Court Historian.

• Agboreko (Elder of Sealed Lips): A soothsayer who performs community rites and speaks almost exclusively in riddles and proverbs.

2. Mortals (The Restless Dead)

These characters represent the "Gueṣts of Honour"—mortals from centuries past who were victims of historical crimes and return seeking judgment.

• The Dead Man (Mulieru): A "fat and bloated" figure in mouldy warrior garb who travels the "understreams" to reach the living. In his former life, he was a Captain who was castrated and sold into slavery for refusing to lead his men into an unjust war over a Queen’s wardrobe.

• The Dead Woman: The Captain’s wife, who has been pregnant for a hundred generations. She was killed while pleading for her husband's life and seeks for the living to "take her case" so she may finally sleep.

• The Half-Child: The "Abiku" spirit of the Dead Woman’s unborn child. He is caught in a spiritual game of sesan for his soul, pursued by Eshuoro and the Triplets.

3. Spirits (The Forest Dwellers)

These are the supernatural entities and deities who orchestrate the events of the forest dance.

• Forest Head (Obaneji): The supreme deity who masquerades as a Chief Clerk named Obaneji to observe humans. He orchestrates the trial to "torture awareness" from human souls, hoping for a "new beginning" despite his despair over human conduct.

• Aroni (The Lame One): The messenger of Forest Head who chose to send "accusers" instead of "illustrious ancestors" to the human feast to expose their hypocrisy.

• Ogun: The god of iron and patron of carvers. He fiercely protects his servant, Demoke, claiming that the carver’s hands were merely instruments of the god's own will during the killing of Oremole.

• Eshuoro: A malevolent, "wayward cult-spirit" seeking vengeance against Demoke for the desecration of his sacred araba tree. He disrupts the ritual by masquerading as the Questioner, a Figure in Red, and a Triplet.

• Murete: A cynical tree-imp who is often drunk on millet wine and acts as an unreliable, bribe-taking informant.

Q. Write a proposed alternative end of the play 'A Dance of the Forest' by Wole Soyinka. (1000 to 1500 words).

In Wole Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests, the play ends with a sense of "futility" as expressed by Forest Head, who despairs that his efforts will lead to any "real improvement in human conduct". The original climax involves a chaotic "Dance of the Unwilling Sacrifice" where Demoke, the carver, is forced to climb his own totem—the desecrated sacred tree of the god Oro—while Eshuoro, the spirit of the forest, sets it ablaze . Demoke is saved by his patron god, Ogun, but the play concludes on a cryptic, cyclical note: the living have confronted their past crimes, yet there is no guarantee that they—or the "Half-Child" (the spirit of the future)—will break the cycle of human cruelty .

The following is a proposed alternative ending that explores a path of radical accountability and the potential for a genuine "new beginning".

A New Dance: The Breaking of the Gourd

The Setting:

The forest clearing is bathed in a sickly, unnatural light. The silhouette of Demoke’s totem looms like a jagged bone against the sky. Instead of the silent, distant village dancers, the "Ants"—representing the millions of common people oppressed throughout history—begin to surge from the undergrowth, their numbers "four hundred million" strong.

The Scene:

Eshuoro stands atop a mound of earth, his Jester leaping frantically with the sacrificial basket . In the original, Demoke is a passive victim, but in this version, Forest Head intervenes before the climb begins.

FOREST HEAD: (His voice booming, no longer weary) "Enough of this shadowed mirror! I have watched the repetitive pattern of your crimes for a hundred generations. Ogun, Eshuoro—you treat these humans like pawns in a divine game of chess, while they treat each other like wood for the forge".

He turns to the three human protagonists: Rola (the courtesan), Adenebi (the orator), and Demoke (the carver) . They are huddled together, but Forest Head waves a hand, and they are suddenly separated by walls of living vines.

FOREST HEAD: "You, Adenebi, seek the 'glory' of empires like Mali and Songhai, but you choke on the smoke of the sixty-five souls you allowed to burn for a bribe" .

ADENEBI: (Stammering) "It was... it was the law of the market! I wanted progress!".

FOREST HEAD: "Progress is not measured in the height of a totem, but in the depth of a grave. And you, Rola, who wears the name Madame Tortoise—you have used your beauty as a whetstone to sharpen the blades of men's deaths".

Rola looks at the Dead Woman, whose "branded navel" and "severed breast" represent the eternal toll of human callousness. For the first time, Rola does not recoil in disgust. She reaches out a hand.

ROLA: "If the world is big, let it be big enough for the truth. I am the whore, and I am the victim. We are the same dirt".

At these words, the "Half-Child"—the spirit of the future—stops his dizzying spinning . He moves away from Eshuoro’s knives and stands between the Dead Woman and the living Rola .

The Climax: The Act of Choice

In the original play, Demoke hands the child back to the Dead Woman, a gesture of "reversing the deed" that Aroni calls a "doomed thing" . In this alternative ending, Forest Head demands a different sacrifice.

FOREST HEAD: "Demoke, you carved this totem by plucking down your apprentice, Oremole, to his death" . "Ogun saved you from the fire, but who saves the forest from you?".

Demoke looks at the totem. He sees not his triumph, but the "desecration" Eshuoro claimed—the "hacked limbs" and "gouged eyes" of the forest . He takes the fire-brand from Eshuoro’s hand. DEMOKE: "I will not climb the tree to save my soul. I will burn the pride that made me carve it." Demoke sets fire to the base of the totem himself. As the flames lick the wood, the "Ants" begin a low, rhythmic humming. It is not the "confused rhythm" of the original, but a sound of immense, collective power.

The Transformation:

As the totem collapses, the "understreams" overflow . The Dead Man and Dead Woman do not simply sink back into the earth as "obscenities". Instead, their mouldy warrior outfits and tattered rags dissolve into the soil, becoming nutrients for new growth.

The Half-Child takes the "smooth egg" he found and, instead of it being swallowed by a serpent, he plants it in the ash of the burnt totem .

FOREST HEAD: (Watching the humans) "Perhaps... only perhaps. You have not just watched the dance; you have broken the gourd".

Conclusion:

Dawn breaks, but it is not the "anxious" dawn of the original where Ogun flees . The forest is silent. The gods—Ogun and Eshuoro—have faded into the trees, their "prowess" diminished by the humans' refusal to play their assigned roles. Agboreko and the Old Man enter, find the totem gone, and Demoke standing whole and awake .OLD MAN: "What did you see? Did the ancestors bless us?". DEMOKE: "The ancestors are not in the clouds, Father. They are the floor we walk on. We have spent too long dancing on their heads. It is time to walk beside them."

The play ends with the three humans—Demoke, Rola, and Adenebi—walking out of the forest together. They are not "dazed" or "inert," but carry the heavy, quiet burden of those who finally know who they are. The "Gathering of the Tribes" in the distance continues its empty noise, but the forest stays behind them, no longer a place of judgment, but a witness to a new, fragile accountability

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