A Dance of the Forests by Wole Soyinka

This blog is based on A Dance of the Forests by Wole Soyinka and this task was assigned by Megha Trivedi Ma'am. 

Introduction

A Dance of the Forests is a profoundly symbolic play in which Wole Soyinka interrogates history, ritual, guilt, and the cyclical nature of human failure. Written for Nigeria’s independence celebrations, the play deliberately refuses to glorify the past and instead summons dishonourable ancestors to confront the living with their inherited moral corruption. Soyinka employs Yoruba cosmology, spirits, and ritual drama to expose how societies repeatedly evade responsibility for their actions by hiding behind tradition and celebration.

This proposed alternative ending seeks to remain faithful to Soyinka’s philosophical vision while offering a modified resolution that emphasizes ethical awakening rather than divine judgment. It does not contradict the original play’s logic but extends it by focusing on confession, memory, and human agency. Instead of concluding with a purely mystical or ritualistic closure, this alternative ending transforms the final scene into a moment of moral reckoning in which the living must confront their resemblance to the guilty dead. The aim is to reinforce Soyinka’s central concern: that without honest engagement with the past, the future will merely reproduce old crimes in new forms.

A Proposed Alternative Ending of A Dance of the Forests

As the masqueraders complete their final circle, the forest does not sink into total darkness but settles into a strange half-light. The drums stop abruptly, and the silence becomes heavier than sound. Demoke, still shaken by the vision of the Half-Child and the ancient crime of the community, steps forward as the last dancer falters. Adenebi, Rola, and Agboreko stand apart, uncertain whether the ritual has ended or whether another judgment remains concealed among the trees.

From the deepest part of the forest emerge the Dead Man and the Dead Woman once more. This time they are not driven by spirits nor forced by memory. They walk freely, without accusation in their eyes. The Half-Child, once formless, now bears faint human features unfinished but recognisable. It does not cry. It gazes at the living with an unsettling stillness.

Forest Head speaks quietly:

“You summoned the past to crown your future.

The past has come, and you turned from it.

Yet it remains, for what is not faced is reborn.”

Adenebi protests that he has already been punished: he has lost office, dignity, and comfort. Forest Head interrupts him:

“You lost them to chance, not to truth.

Guilt still walks unburied.”

Rola, usually defiant, lowers her eyes. For the first time she neither seduces nor mocks. She speaks of her former life of power, cruelty, and survival purchased at another’s expense. She does not plead for forgiveness; she merely admits what she has been.

Agboreko invokes ritual, insisting that the festival itself has paid the debt of the community. He raises his staff to seal the moment with tradition. Demoke steps forward and blocks him.

“No,” Demoke says. “Ritual without memory is only dance. We have danced enough.”

He continues:

“We summoned ancestors and received criminals. That is our likeness. If we end this night with drums and forgetting, the Half-Child will return—not as spirit, but as flesh.”

Turning to the Dead Woman, Demoke kneels. This gesture disturbs the forest more deeply than any supernatural sign. He does not beg forgiveness.

“We carry your wound in our festivals,” he says. “We carve your pain into our masks. But we do not change. If there is a future, let it begin with shame.”

Forest Head observes him silently. The spirits murmur like wind through broken branches.

The Dead Man raises his hand and speaks:

“We are not here to be avenged.

We are here to be remembered correctly.”

He gestures to the Half-Child, who touches the ground. Where its hand meets the earth, a thin red line glows faintly, as though the soil itself remembers blood.

Forest Head declares:

“There will be no blessing tonight.

Nor curse.

Only knowledge.”

The living are commanded to face the Half-Child and speak not of what they have suffered, but of what they have caused.

Adenebi admits the villagers ruined by his bureaucratic arrogance.

Rola admits the men she used and destroyed.

Agboreko admits the traditions he hid behind to excuse cowardice.

Their words do not redeem them, but they fracture the habit of denial.

The masqueraders remove their masks and place them on the ground. The drums resume slowly and unevenly. The dance that follows is awkward and broken, as if the dancers are relearning how to move after injury.

The Dead Woman withdraws into the shadows with the Half-Child and says:

“We go not because you are forgiven,

but because you are awake.”

Forest Head remains briefly:

“Remember: the future is not born of festivals,

but of scars that refuse silence.”

The forest brightens slightly, as if dawn hesitates to arrive. The spirits depart. The humans remain without masks, without gods to speak for them.

Demoke says quietly, “We must build differently.”

There is no chorus. No divine answer. Only human responsibility.

The drums fade into footsteps.

Blackout.

Conclusion

This alternative ending preserves Soyinka’s rejection of sentimental reconciliation and heroic history. Like the original play, it refuses to grant the community easy absolution and insists that the crimes of the past are inseparable from the failures of the present. The Half-Child remains a symbol of unfinished justice, and the Dead remain moral witnesses rather than objects of pity or vengeance.

By shifting the resolution from divine spectacle to human confession, the ending reinforces the idea that ritual alone cannot heal a corrupt society. Awareness replaces forgiveness, and knowledge replaces blessing. The spirits’ withdrawal does not signal harmony but abandonment, leaving human beings alone with their moral inheritance.

The forest becomes not a mystical escape but a site of exposure where history must be confronted honestly. In this way, the alternative ending remains loyal to Soyinka’s tragic vision of history as cyclical and self-perpetuating unless consciously interrupted. It affirms that true independence political or moral cannot be achieved through celebration alone but only through acknowledgment of guilt and the courage to act differently.

Thus, the play concludes not with prophecy but with responsibility, suggesting that the future will be shaped not by ancestral myths but by whether the living choose to learn from them.

Thank You !