Death has been said to be the leveller in that it does not recognize one’s class, race, ethnicity or nationality. Death does not look at the face before it strikes; it pays no attention to one’s beliefs or outlook to issues in life. Death has often been said to be inevitable. So it is glaring that for as long as people are born, people are bound to die someday but how man dies is a huge mystery. This paper examines the issue of death vis-a-vis man especially as documented in the works of two prominent writers in Nigeria. Wole Soyinka and Hope Eghagha present the issue of death in similar manner in their works, Death and the King’s Horseman and Death not a Redeemer respectively. The two plays examine the psychology of man in the face of death; it also looks at culture as a determinant of man’s destiny. The paper takes a closer look at the role played by religion and emphasizes that death very much like ‘change’ is constant in every religion and culture. For this reason man must constantly live in anticipation of the inevitable-death.
