Willy Loman, Elesin & The Price Of Meaning: Two Plays That Challenge Society’s Values

A Salesman in America, a Horseman in Oyo

AT first glance, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman appear to have almost nothing in common.

One is set in post-war America and follows an ageing salesman struggling with professional failure. The other is rooted in Yoruba society under British colonial rule and follows a traditional horseman confronted with a sacred obligation.

Yet both dramas revolve around death, responsibility and the search for meaning.

More importantly, both playwrights use the collapse of an individual to expose the deeper values and contradictions of the society surrounding him.

When Success Becomes an Identity

Willy Loman’s tragedy begins with a belief that sounds deceptively simple: if a person is attractive, ambitious and well liked, success will follow.

For Willy, personal relationships become a form of economic capital. He wants his sons, Biff and Happy, to inherit his faith in the American Dream.

Reality gradually destroys that confidence.

His career declines. His financial circumstances deteriorate. His relationship with Biff becomes increasingly fractured. His memories begin to intrude upon the present, creating a dramatic world in which the past and present constantly collide.

Miller’s achievement lies in making Willy’s personal breakdown represent something much larger.

Willy does not merely fail at selling goods. He fails at selling himself the American Dream.

A System That Measures People by Usefulness

The play appeared in 1949, when the United States was consolidating a powerful post-war consumer economy.

The mythology of upward mobility was becoming deeply embedded in American national identity. Miller questioned the darker side of that promise.

His argument was not simply that some people fail to achieve the American Dream. Rather, the system can encourage people to interpret structural failure as personal inadequacy.

Willy therefore becomes both participant and victim.

He believes in the rules even when those rules are destroying him.

His suicide becomes his final attempt to turn himself into something economically valuable to his family. Even death is filtered through the language of financial provision.

Elesin & a Different Definition of Duty

Elesin’s world operates according to an entirely different understanding of responsibility.

As the king’s horseman, he occupies a position within Yoruba cosmology that connects political authority with spiritual continuity. When the king dies, Elesin must accompany him into death.

The ritual is not presented simply as an act of personal suicide. It has a collective significance within the society’s understanding of existence.

That distinction is central to understanding Soyinka’s play.

British colonial authorities, however, view the ritual through the framework of their own values. They intervene and prevent Elesin from completing his obligation.

The result is catastrophic.

Soyinka’s Refusal of a Simple Colonial Narrative

It would be easy to read Death and the King’s Horseman merely as a confrontation between British colonialism and African tradition.

Soyinka deliberately complicates such an interpretation.

The colonial intervention is unquestionably important, but Elesin is not portrayed as completely blameless. His hesitation and attachment to earthly pleasures contribute to the tragedy.

The playwright therefore constructs a more demanding argument.

Colonial power disrupts an existing cultural order, but individuals within that order still possess agency and responsibility.

This prevents the drama from becoming a simple morality tale.

Different Dramatic Languages

Miller and Soyinka also employ very different theatrical techniques.

Miller uses realism and psychological drama. Willy’s memories, hallucinations and fragmented recollections allow the audience to enter the mind of a man whose understanding of reality is collapsing.

Soyinka employs a more ritualistic and poetic theatrical vocabulary.

Music, dance, proverb, song and Yoruba cosmology are not decorative elements. They form part of the intellectual structure of the drama.

The distinction matters because Soyinka does not invite audiences to view Yoruba culture merely as an exotic backdrop. Its worldview provides the internal logic through which the tragedy must be understood.

The Individual & the Community

The contrasting scale of the two tragedies is particularly striking.

Willy’s death devastates his family, but it does not fundamentally alter American society. The economic system that contributed to his destruction survives him.

Elesin’s failure carries consequences for the wider community because his ritual responsibility is connected to the continuity of the society’s spiritual order.

Olunde’s eventual sacrifice restores that order, but at an enormous cost.

The two plays therefore offer contrasting visions of tragedy.

Miller presents a world in which an individual’s death changes almost nothing.

Soyinka presents a world in which individual action can affect the balance of an entire community.

Two Societies, One Warning

The historical circumstances behind the plays make their comparison even more significant.

Miller wrote at a moment when America was celebrating economic expansion and the promise of the self-made individual.

Soyinka wrote in post-independence Nigeria, drawing partly on the historical 1946 incident in which British colonial authorities intervened to prevent a ritual suicide involving the king’s horseman.

Both playwrights were therefore interrogating powerful social assumptions.

Miller questioned the belief that economic success provides the ultimate measure of human worth.

Soyinka questioned the assumption that an outside authority can dismiss another society’s cultural and spiritual system as irrational simply because it does not conform to Western understanding.

What Remains After the Tragedy?

Ultimately, the two plays ask what happens when societies construct identities around rigid expectations.

Willy cannot imagine himself outside the identity of the successful salesman and provider.

Elesin cannot escape the enormous expectations attached to his traditional office, even as his personal desires begin to conflict with his obligation.

Their worlds differ, but the underlying question remains remarkably similar:

How much of a human being’s identity should be determined by the role society assigns to them?

That question gives both plays enduring relevance.

From the pressures of capitalism and professional success to the demands of tradition, culture, family and political authority, societies continue to create standards by which people measure themselves.

Miller and Soyinka warn that when those standards become absolute, the consequences can be devastating.

Their characters die differently. Their societies respond differently. Their dramatic languages are worlds apart.

But both plays ultimately insist on the same uncomfortable truth: when a society turns one particular idea of worth into an absolute measure of human existence, tragedy is never far away.