What are the themes in Wole Soyinka's poem "Death in the Dawn"?

As the title of Soyinka’s poem suggests, one of its major thematic ideas is death. In addition, the poem explores issues of man’s role on earth, his impact on nature, and the impact of technology.

Death is explored via the two deaths described in the poem: first, the “line trumpeter of dawn,” or rooster, then the traveler, “silenced in the hug of” a car accident. The juxtaposition of death and dawn suggests that life is fleeting and fragile, and that people often ignore the constant possibility of death that lurks all around us. Despite the traveler’s mother’s warning to “never walk when the road waits,” the traveler—who represents mankind as a whole—goes through life with reckless abandon, destroying what lies ahead if it gets in his way.

The man’s ironic death within the car is a comment about how mankind destroys itself. The speaker of the poem ponders whether this image of the traveler mangled inside his mangled vehicle—the “closed contortion”—is a reflection of the speaker himself. This shows that the traveler’s death represents man’s unintentional self-destruction; while technology like the car allows the traveler to go farther at a faster pace, it is also the source of his demise. Soyinka suggests that the progress of humanity will also be responsible for its end.

What was Wole Soyinka's intention in writing "Death in the Dawn"?

Wole Soyinka gives us a clue about his intention in writing “Death in the Dawn” in the short prose introduction he includes with the poem. He tells us that one morning he was driving to Lagos when a white cockerel flew directly into his windshield and was killed. He continued to drive, but not much farther down the road, he came across an automobile accident in which one man had died.

These two deaths give rise to a meditation about the fragility of life, the suddenness of death, the need to appreciate life while we have it, and the connections between all people.

Soyinka begins the poem with an address to a traveler (who could be any person journeying through life). This traveler must set out at dawn and pay close attention to the beauty of the world through which he or she travels, observing all the little details that so often get lost through distractions. The day is filled with possibilities, with “sap” that suggests abundant life.

Yet then something happens. The bird flies out, hits the windshield, and disintegrates into a snowstorm of feathers. A grim note of death has entered into the day, a reminder of a stark reality. The poet also used this incident to comment on human progress. If the traveler had not been driving a car, the bird might not have died. Yet it became a victim to the progress of the automobile.

The victim is still just a bird, though. But soon that is no longer the case, for there is another victim. A man, a “brother,” a fellow human being has also been killed in a car crash. He has been silenced, wrapped up in the crumpled wreck of this human invention. Death has come suddenly to this man. He had probably been going on about his daily life when tragedy stuck. The speaker wonders if this dead man could be himself. It isn’t literally so, of course, but he feels a strong connection with this person and implies that he has lost a little of himself through the man’s sudden death.