What's the Cultural ideology in the play, Death and the King's Horseman?

The central ritual of the text -- the king's horseman dying so he can join his master in the afterlife -- is a fascinating component of Yoruba society, but also functions here as a dying country's last gasp in the face of colonial control and oppression. The ritual is important to the Nigerians in all times and places, but there is special import here in that its success or failure seems to say a lot about the status of resistance to the colonizers. When Elesin is prevented from carrying it out, their world seems pushed off its axis; their traditions and beliefs are deeply wounded. The colonizers, to put it simply, have won. Even though Olunde completes the ritual for his father, there is a sense that there is no going back; this culture's way of life is effectively over.