Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

oppressed , politically or otherwise. reg:ardless of their co lour , class, country or creed.
So relevant is slavery to the production of Soyinka's drama that he subjects his
audience to me stark reality of its humiliaring and destructive power on human life. In
addition to Euripides' smo lderin g tomb of Semele with green vines clinging to its
ruins . Soyinka sets up "a road [which] dips steeply into lower background. lined by
the bodies of crucified slaves mostly in the skeletal stage " (1) . Having a road dip
steeply into the tower background conveys the impression that there an: multitudes of
such bodies of slaves expo sed for miles along the road . Far more devastating than
Zeus' lightning and fire that destroy ed Semele and her ho me are the slaves that have
been crucified and their bodies left to rot in the open air. Just as these slaves were
kept and then murdered to satisfy Pentheus' whims so were the slaves in lhe
nineteenth century. usedto sarisfy the economic greed of the Europeans. Many slaves
were inhumanely treated and died under the burden of work or the beatings of their
cruel slave masters. Unfortunately. another form.of inhumanity still exists; the
murders such as occurred in the Biafran warduring which Soyinka nor: only witnessed
merciless killings of others but wasalso the victim of man 's inhumanity to man. 3O
Soyinka portrays a comp lementary scene on the set as ano ther constant
reminder of slavery . His stage directions read: "Farth er do wn and into the wings , a
lean-to built against the wall , a threshing-floor. A cloud of chaff, and through it. dim
figures of slaves flailing an d treading" (I). Slavery , colo nization, aparthe id, deeply
ingrained into the history and the lives of Africans, is dramatized physically by the
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