The Lion and the Jewel

The setting of The Lion and the Jewel is a Yoruba village called Ilujinle, in the Ibadan region of southwest Nigeria in the late 1950s. The Yoruba are one of the major ethnic groups in Nigeria....

At the heart of The Lion and the Jewel is a fierce battle between tradition and modernity. When Soyinka wrote the play, there were deep tensions between those who wanted Nigeria to become more...

In the play, the plot revolves around Sidi’s decision about which man she will marry. She is the most renowned beauty of her village and, as such, believes she can freely choose among her suitors....

Cultural conflict forms the heart of The Lion and the Jewel, paralleling the rapid industrialization of Africa during the mid-twentieth century. Soyinka did not write the play as a theoretical...

The Lion and the Jewel is about the attempts of two men, Lakunle and Baroka, to win the hand of the fetching Sidi in marriage. Lakunle, a school teacher, symbolizes the Western point of view...

Wole Soyinka incorporates several important life lessons throughout his play The Lion and the Jewel. Soyinka uses Sidi's behavior and plight to suggest that overconfidence, vanity, and pride can...

In The Lion and the Jewel, Wole Soyinka conveys the struggles for control between two women and two men in rural Nigeria. Two closely related themes structure these conflicts. One is the interplay...

Early on in the play, Sidi is told about how her images in a foreign magazine have given her fame and prestige. She encourages the villagers to participate in "the dance of the lost traveler."...

The bride price is a dowry that has to be paid in order for Lakunle to be allowed to marry Sidi. Sidi, like most people in her community, takes the bride price very seriously. To her, it is what...

The bride price, the dowry that has to be paid to marry Sidi, functions in The Lion and the Jewel as a symbol of the traditional Yoruba customs and values. The young Lakunle wants to marry Sidi,...

Chief Baroka uses his wisdom, power, and cunning tactics to seduce Sidi into marrying him. Throughout his endeavors, he uses his wife Sadiku as the pawn in the game plan. Sidi, the "jewel," gets...

There are a couple flashbacks throughout the play The Lion and the Jewel. The first flashback takes place during "the dance of the lost traveler." The flashback tells the audience the story of how...

The main conflict in Wole Soyinka’s play The Lion and the Jewel is the competition between Baroka and Lakunle, suitors who are both after Sidi’s hand in marriage. Sidi is a beautiful young woman...

The literary devices used in The Lion and the Jewel include irony, personification, simile, metaphor, and symbolism. Irony is perhaps the most prominent literary device in the play. The entire plot...

This is somewhat of a tough question to answer, because there not merely one single reason why Sidi does not choose to marry Lakunle. Her reasons for not marrying him also probably change over the...

Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka’s 1959 play The Lion and the Jewel centers on the conflict between tradition and modernization and African versus Western culture. Sidi, the “jewel” referenced in the...

At first, the young Sidi has no interest in the sixty-two-year-old Baroka, despite his high status in the village. She is somewhat attracted to Western culture, in the form of the young,...

Through his play The Lion and the Jewel, Wole Soyinka shows his mastery of modern European dramatic form along with his knowledge and appreciation of Nigerian oral literature and performance. The...

The category of "comedy" is a wide one, encompassing such literary works as Dante's Divine Comedy, which is not remotely funny. It has often been used to refer to any work of literature with a...

In Wole Soyinka's play, Sadiku plays several crucial roles. As the Bale's senior wife, she has considerable authority within their household and, because he is a powerful man, in the community at...

Wole Soyinka incorporates numerous dimensions of performance into The Lion and the Jewel. The resulting play is a rich medley of Western and African performance traditions. Rather than relying...

The Lion and the Jewel presents Sidi as a young woman who is faced with two distinct alternatives in a potential husband. The process of courtship does not go entirely smoothly, as both men present...

The Lion and the Jewel is an interesting play for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is how well a play written in 1959 explores media images and their influences on a person's own ego....

Several major similarities are that Lakunle and Baroka are both men, they live in Ilujinle village, and they want to marry the same woman, the beautiful Sidi. Both men are shallow, in that they...

The conflict in the play, set in Nigeria in the 1950s, is between indigenous tribal tradition and western modernity. This is a period in which countries in Africa were achieving their independence...

The Lion and the Jewel is a play with only a few main characters. That's not necessarily a rare thing. What is much more unique and rare about those main characters is that none of those characters...

At the beginning of the "dance of the lost traveler," Lakunle plays the role of the foreign photographer who is driving through the jungle. The four girls who are miming and acting as the wheels of...

Sidi looks at her potential bride-price as a monetary expression of her value as a person. She has a very high opinion of herself and fully expects that any bride-price will reflect her exaggerated...

For the most part, symbolism is used in the play to highlight the tension between the old and the new, the traditional Africa and the modern Africa that is just coming into being. For instance, we...

The primary conflict in the story exists between Baroka and Lakunle, two men who are competing for the love of Sidi. Both men are deceptive and in many ways not what they seem. Lakunle comes across...

The love triangle that involves a young girl, a young man, and a wealthy, powerful, older man is one of the staples of comedy. The older man is tricked or thwarted so that the young couple can...

In Wole Soyinka’s play The Lion and the Jewel, the character of Sadiku is a well-to-do, high status senior woman in the village. Sadiku understands that her current and future status are connected...

Lakunle is the village school teacher who opposes traditional Yoruba culture in favor of modern Western civilization. He continually criticizes Sidi, Baroka, and Sadiku for their way of life. At...

The jewel refers to Sidi, a young girl who is trying to decide which man she wants to marry. Sidi is called the "jewel" because she is beautiful and coveted. Baroka and Lakunle both want to marry...

Lakunle is the village's school teacher who wishes to marry Sidi. He is a proponent of modernity and a supporter of Western civilization. He is also rather arrogant and critical of Yoruba culture....

Lakunle speaks directly and often without respect or thought; Baroka is more thoughtful and cautious with his words to help him achieve his goals. Both men, however, speak with the confidence that...

Wole Soyinka depicts contemporary West African culture as a complicated mixture of European and Yoruba elements, including important social institutions such as marriage and education. He uses both...

Sidi and Baroka embody traditional notions of womanhood and manhood respectively. Sidi is a beautiful woman, and her beauty is a source of near-universal admiration. In the traditional village...

In Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel, Baroka is called the lion because he is a very strong man. Baroka is the old, wise chief of the village of Ilujinle. Even though he is sixty-two years old,...

In his play, Wole Soyinka places gender prominently at the forefront of social conflicts between traditional and modern society. Lakunie, a young African man who has received a Western education in...

Sadiku initially seeks Sidi to tell her that Baroka has requested her hand in marriage. Sidi rejects Baroka's offer because she has become conceited after seeing her images in the magazine. Sidi...

Lakunle insults Sidi more than once: for someone who claims to be in love with her and want to marry her, he seems to insult her all the time as he seeks to assert dominance over her. He tells her...

Sidi could quite easily be considered the play's protagonist. What's interesting about calling her that is the fact that Sidi does not seem like a standard protagonist. More often than not, the...

The primary theme of The Lion and the Jewel is that of tradition vs. modernism. Throughout the play, the two primary characters fight over the affections of Sidi, who is the "jewel" of the play....

Sadiku is Baroka's head wife who petitions Sidi to marry Baroka in the play The Lion and the Jewel on the Bale's behalf. Sidi initially declines Baroka's offer because she has become conceited...

In my opinion, I would say that Baroka is the "winner" in the play because he successfully woos Sidi and ends up marrying her. Throughout the play, Lakunle and Baroka both attempt to win Sidi's...