the lion and the jewel essay

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The lion and the jewel

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The Lion and the Jewel

Wole soyinka, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

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• The Lion and the Jewel
• Literature in English

The Lion and the Jewel Past Questions

This question is based on Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel. The two characters that symbolize the lion and the jewel respectively are

• A. Lakunle and Sidi
• B. Baroka and Sadiku
• C. Sadiku and Sidi
• D. Baroka and Sidi

This question is based on Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel. 'This is the words of women. At this moment our star sits in the center of the sky We are supreme.' These words were spoken by

• A. The favourite
• D. the third girl

This question is based on Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel. The Bala is symbolically referred to as a fox because of his

• A. mental powess
• B. sexual powess
• C. physical powess

This question is based on Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel. Which of the following character traits will apply to Lakunle?

• A. Comic and absurd
• B. Stupid and simplistic
• C. Pompous and spontaneous
• D. Decisive and bold

This question is based on Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel. Which of the following divisions is used as`a technical device to denote the symbolic significance of certain events?

• A. Day, morning and afternoon
• B. Morning, noon and night
• C. Morning, evening and midnight
• D. Mid-day, midnight and morning
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The Lion and the Jewel

27 pages • 54 minutes read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Act Summaries & Analyses

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Sidi is the “jewel” referred to in the play’s title. She is young and beautiful, and is known as “the village belle.” Sidi represents an aspect of tradition in the play. She first appears carrying a pail of water on her head, a traditional women’s task. She also dresses traditionally. These attributes, though normal to Sidi, are signs of a primitive past to Lakunle. Sidi has turned down Lakunle’s marriage offer, and refuses to marry him because he in turn refuses to pay her bride-price. The bride-price is another custom that Sidi upholds, linking her to the traditions of their village, Ilujinle. Sidi is also viewed as vain. Her picture is taken by a foreigner and published in a magazine, placing her far above even the village chieftain, Bale Baroka. Her vanity is ultimately her undoing. She is tricked by the Bale into sleeping with him. In the end, and though she had earlier promised to never marry him, she leaves at the end of the play to marry the Bale, thus highlighting a perhaps necessary balance between the rashness of youth and the knowledge of age.

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The Lion and the Jewel

By wole soyinka, the lion and the jewel literary elements, setting and context.

Nigerian village of Ilujinle, 1950s

Narrator and Point of View

3rd person (Play)

Tone and Mood

Sarcastic; playful; lively; witty

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist: Sidi. Antagonists: Baroka and Lakunle.

Major Conflict

Will Sidi be able to carry out her plan to tease the Bale, and will she marry the schoolteacher Lakunle?

When Sidi runs out sobbing and announces to Lakunle and Sadiku that Baroka fooled them all, and that she is no longer a maid.

Foreshadowing

-When Baroka muses to himself at the end of the first act that it has been five months since he took a wife, it foreshadows his plot to have Sidi as a wife. -When Sadiku sees the wrestler leaving the Bale's place, "some significance of this breaks on Sadiku and she begins to look a little puzzled" (55). This foreshadows the Bale's virility.

Understatement

- "A woman spoke to me this afternoon" (Sidi, 43).

-Lakunle quotes Genesis when he talks of the man and the woman being one flesh (8). -The Yoruba gods are alluded to throughout the play. -Lakunle references biblical women such as Ruth, Esther, and Bathsheba when talking about Sidi (20).

See separate section on Imagery.

Parallelism

Personification.

"The harder part...to break the jungle's back" (24).

Use of Dramatic Devices

-There are a few soliloquies: Lakunle talking about progress, and Baroka also talking about his views on progress. -Denouement is observable in Sidi's decision to marry Baroka and Lakunle's shifting his attention to another girl. -Soyinka uses a flashback to depict the white surveyor accepting Baroka's bribe to desist putting the railway through Ilujinle. -Soyinka satirizes pompous, self-interested, and prideful individuals.

The Lion and the Jewel Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Lion and the Jewel is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

ATTEMPT A JUSTIFICATION OF SOYNKAS PLAY THE LION AND THE JEWEL

The narrative is a funny and magical piece of work: full of folk fantasy, folk wisdom. But it's also got its share of folk cruelty. And more than that--its share of hard political reality as well. Written in 1962--when Soyinka was a young man...

Explain What Lakunla Meant by half education is hamful

Lakunle is a smart but arrogant twenty-three-year-old schoolteacher who lambasts Ilujinle for its backwards views. He thinks semi educated people lack substance and create half-baked ideas.

It does not seem that Soyinka consciously tries to make a statement about gender in regard to power, but he does so nonetheless. On the one hand, he creates two female characters that are sassy, opinionated, manipulative, and independent. On the...

Study Guide for The Lion and the Jewel

The Lion and the Jewel study guide contains a biography of Wole Soyinka, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Lion and the Jewel
• The Lion and the Jewel Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Lion and the Jewel

The Lion and the Jewel essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka.

• The Balance of Power in A View from the Bridge and The Lion and the Jewel
• The Power of Image in "The Lion and the Jewel"

Lesson Plan for The Lion and the Jewel

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Lion and the Jewel
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Lion and the Jewel Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Lion and the Jewel

• Introduction
• Critical reception

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Review: ‘The Wiz’ Eases Back to Broadway

Almost 50 years after it debuted, this classic Black take on “The Wizard of Oz” tries to update its original formula.

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By Maya Phillips

Let me start with a confession: I’ve never liked “The Wizard of Oz.” But give me a retelling with, say, a Black Dorothy and Black Oz, and I’m immediately clicking my heels.

When “The Wiz” debuted on Broadway in 1975, it was a colorful exclamation of Blackness on the stage. That’s to say a Black score, by Charlie Smalls, including gospel and R&B; a Black cast; and Black audiences at the forefront.

Then three years later the beloved Motown film adaptation, starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Richard Pryor, pulled a Black Dorothy from her home, not in Kansas but in Harlem, and the New York City boroughs were cleverly transmogrified into the stylish, futuristic Oz.

Now “The Wiz” returns to Broadway in a revival directed by Schele Williams and an updated book by Amber Ruffin , with the aim of creating a take “ through the Blackest of Black lenses .” This new production, which opened at the Marquis Theater on Wednesday, showcases creative visuals and some standout performances, but stops short of bringing modern Blackness to Broadway.

Here, Dorothy (Nichelle Lewis, in her Broadway debut) is a city girl who’s moved to Kansas to live with her Aunt Em (Melody A. Betts, who later doubles as the deliciously brass-throated witch Evillene). But Dorothy doesn’t feel at home and is being bullied by her classmates. A sudden meteorological anomaly flies Dorothy to Oz, where she seeks the counsel of the great and powerful Wiz (Wayne Brady) on how to get back home. Along the way she’s joined by a scarecrow (Avery Wilson) in need of a brain, a tinman (Phillip Johnson Richardson) wanting a heart and a lion (Kyle Ramar Freeman) desperate for some courage. (Sorry dog-lovers, there’s no Toto.)

There’s plenty of gold to be found along this yellow brick road. Deborah Cox’s Glinda, the good witch, in a shimmering gold gown, looks like a jewel and sounds like one, too, with her crystalline voice switching from jazzy scatting to a sparkling falsetto in “He’s the Wiz” and later offering a triumphant performance of “Believe in Yourself.”

Glinda’s not the only one with flashy fashion; the costume design, by Sharen Davis, draws from a wild, unpredictable range of time periods and trends. Ozians with blue Afro puffs, green extensions and multicolored braids flounce around in bright petticoats during a scene meant to replicate a New Orleans second-line parade; Evillene’s army of evil poppies slinks around in ’70s-style Afros and flare-legged jumpsuits, and the denizens of Emerald City saunter in Afro-futuristic outfits with ornate collars and fringe.

There’s just as much color in the choreography, by JaQuel Knight, which offers an evocative mélange of styles. Dorothy’s tornado is summoned with a flurry of pirouetting dancers in billowing gray fabrics. Later those stiff-backed, graceful turns are just as quickly swapped for hunched, down-low Afro-Cuban steps and crisp hip-hop moves.

The best performances in the production are likewise grounded in movement: Wilson is a playful scarecrow, his wobbly knees and freely flinging limbs showing off impressive flexibility and acrobatic skill. Freeman’s dramatic prancing and marching as the lion pair perfectly with his character’s … well, leonine theatricality.

Add to the mix a popping-and-locking Tinman who also drops a soulful “What Would I Do If I Could Feel” and the charming showmanship of Brady’s Wiz (armed with a lively exit number even more delightful than his entrance), and you’ve got a cast of sidekicks who outshine the hero.

As Dorothy, Lewis dutifully hits the notes but is dwarfed by the stage and the performers around her. Though Ruffin’s book offers a few modern updates to the lingo and gives her companions new back stories, Dorothy still lacks dimension, and Lewis struggles to fill her in with any emotional shading.

Despite its freewheeling fashions there’s a hemmed-in quality to most of the production. This Dorothy and her adventure, like the overall direction, is bright and tidy but falls short in character. The animated backdrops of Oz often have a cutesy, over-glossed Pixar-movie feel. The pacing doesn’t quite “ease on down” as it does race through the show’s two-and-a-half-hour running time; the settings and characters pass by in a blur. Even the musical arc of the show slumps into a routine, with a predictable build toward each big solo climax.

All of which is to say that “The Wiz” is a pleasant, serviceable time at the theater, but as a new production of a musical with a legacy of bringing Blackness to one of Hollywood’s and Broadway’s favorite fairy tales, it’s less satisfying.

There is a fresher production hinted at in the ecstatic array of costumes and mix of choreography. There’s a stronger, more daring representation of modern-day Blackness suggested in the faint touches of New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood and a character’s quip about discovering their hair’s curl pattern.

In the past this paper’s critics weren’t impressed by productions of this musical. In 1984 Frank Rich rashly dismissed the “tacky” Broadway production of a musical that he deemed “hardly great” but “a once-fervent expression of Black self-respect and talent.” In his review of the original, in 1975, Clive Barnes wrote of a production with “vitality” and “style” that was nevertheless “tiresome” — perhaps because, he ventures, for him such fairy tales are only appealing when they’re grounded in one’s own experience. Does the show “say different things to Blacks than to whites?” asked a Black writer in The Times several months later. His answer was yes. So is mine.

Nearly 50 years later, with a similar degree of ambivalence, I wonder if a revival of one of theater’s beloved Black musicals is truly a Black experience. It feels more like just another night at the theater.

The Wiz Through Aug. 18 at the Marquis Theater, Manhattan; wizmusical.com . Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.

An earlier version of this review misstated the opening day of “The Wiz.” It was Wednesday, not Tuesday.

How we handle corrections

Maya Phillips is an arts and culture critic for The Times.  More about Maya Phillips