DELE CHARLEY: The Blood of a Stranger 1. Compare Kindo and his father in the play. 2. Examine Wara's encounters with soko in the play.

Answer Details

1. Comparison of Kindo and his father. In Dele Charley's The Blood of a Stranger, Kindo and his father, King Santigie of Mando, are drawn in sharp contrast, and their differences carry the play's meaning. Kindo, the prince and heir, is upright, courageous and clear-sighted. He loves his people and his land, distrusts the schemes of the priest Maligu and the stranger Whitehead (Parker), and resists the sale of the village's wealth and freedom to the foreign visitor. He stands for youthful integrity, patriotism and the defence of tradition against corruption. King Santigie, by contrast, is weak, greedy and easily manipulated. Dazzled by the gifts and false promises of the white stranger, and misled by the treacherous Maligu, he allows greed and vanity to blind him to the danger threatening his kingdom. Where Kindo sees clearly and would protect the community, the king is short-sighted and self-serving, ready to betray his people's interest for personal gain. The generational contrast, principled son against compromised father, dramatises the conflict between integrity and greed, and between the defence of the land and its betrayal to foreign exploitation.

2. Wara's encounters with Soko. Wara, the young woman promised as a sacrificial victim in the plot hatched by Maligu, is caught up in the web of deceit surrounding the fetish and its priesthood. Her encounters expose the manipulation of religion for selfish and destructive ends. The priestly scheme, cloaked in the authority of the gods and the demands of ritual, marks her out to be sacrificed so that the conspirators may achieve their aims and please the foreign stranger. Through Wara's ordeal the play reveals how sacred custom can be perverted: what is presented as the will of the gods is in truth the design of corrupt men. Her plight arouses sympathy and outrage, and it sharpens the conflict that Kindo takes up on the side of justice. The encounters thus dramatise the abuse of traditional religion, the vulnerability of the innocent, and the wider theme of exploitation, both of the community by greedy insiders and of the whole village by the foreign intruder.