SECTION A: African Drama DELE CHARLEY: The Blood of a Stranger Consider the view that tradition triumphs in the play.

Answer Details

The view that tradition triumphs in Dele Charley's The Blood of a Stranger is largely defensible, though the triumph is a costly and bloodstained one. The play stages a struggle between the settled customs of Mandoland and the corrupting intrusion of foreign greed, and by the close the forces that tried to pervert tradition are overthrown.

Tradition under threat. The order of Mandoland rests on kingship, the oracle, and communal reverence for the gods. This order is attacked from within and without: the greedy priest Maligu falsifies the oracle, and the foreign trader Parker schemes to seize the land. Their plot to sacrifice the virgin Wara is an abuse of a genuine traditional institution, the sacred sacrifice, for selfish ends. The threat, then, is not tradition itself but its corruption.

Resistance from within tradition. The defence of the land comes from figures rooted in its values: Kindo, the loyal warrior prince, and the community's sense of justice. Kindo's revolt is provoked precisely by the violation of what is sacred, the intended murder of an innocent for a stranger's profit. His stand represents authentic tradition rising against those who would prostitute it.

The triumph and its price. By the end, the conspirators are exposed and destroyed and the alien exploitation is defeated, so that the integrity of Mandoland is, in a sense, restored. Yet the victory is soaked in blood, hence the title. Lives are lost, and the community is scarred by the betrayal of its own leaders. Tradition survives, but only after paying a terrible price and after revealing how easily custom can be manipulated by the corrupt.

Conclusion. One may therefore agree that tradition triumphs, in that greed and foreign manipulation do not finally prevail and the sacred order is vindicated. But Charley's play qualifies this triumph: it warns that tradition is safe only when its custodians are honest, and that its survival can demand a heavy sacrifice of innocent blood.