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Exploring South African Writing

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Submitted By LizanneEls
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DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN AND A GRAIN OF WHEAT

Various kinds of writing exist and these types of writing are very different from one another in terms of the techniques that writers use in a specific genre. In order to gain an understanding of certain texts, the most important part lies in the reading of that text. Looking at two types of writing, namely a play (Death and the King’s Horseman) and a novel (A Grain of Wheat), the essay will explore the ways in which a playwright and a novelist deploy key stylistic and dramatic effects and how plays and novels function through a key passage in each of these writings.

A key passage for me in Death and the King’s Horseman is found at the end of Scene Four:

Elesin: Olunde? (He moves his head, inspecting him from side to side.) Olunde! (He collapses slowly at Olunde’s feet.) Oh son, don’t let the sight of your father turn you blind!

Olunde: (he moves for the first time since he heard his voice, brings his head slowly down to look on him) I have no father, eater of leftovers.

The context in which this passage is found, is that this where Olunde thinks his father to be dead because of his sacrifice and goes to pay his last respects to his father’s body. At that moment Pilkings appear and speaks of a prisoner he wants to hold in the old cellar under strong guard. Elesin’s voice is heard as he breaks free and storms on stage coming to a standstill as he sees his son. Olunde rejects his father, in spite of his father being ashamed at his failure and his begging of Olunde to acknowledge him.

I chose this passage as a central passage because it entails such intensity of built up tension and because of the reversal in this text. What Olunde thought to be the truth turned out to be false and this raises feeling of doubt and betrayal.

In the novel A Grain of Wheat, I selected the following

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