From the Western perspective, it is hard to understand ritual suicide as anything positive or helpful to the living. There almost seems to be no Western equivalent to the "duty" of Elesin in Death and the King's Horseman. However, Wole Soyinka gives us a comparable situation in Jane's description of a captain blowing up a ship to save the people on the shore. It's a moment of hypocrisy on Britain's part, both trying to prevent Elesin's suicide and lauding a Western suicide which purports to do the exact same thing - save the living from destru ....