How we cite our quotes: Act.Line
Quote #1
PILKINGS: What the hell is the matter with you man!
JANE: Your costume darling. Our fancy dress. (2.9-10)
Pilkings is responding to Amusa's reaction at seeing the Pilkingses dressed in egungun attire. Although these costumes have some heavy-duty spiritual significance for the Yoruba (so much so that even Amusa, a Muslim, is scared), Simon and Jane just treat them as dress-up clothes and nothing more—and they can't really understand why anyone else would have a problem with that.
Quote #2
Oh Amusa, what is there to be scared of in the costume? You saw it confiscated last month from those egungun men who were creating trouble in town. You helped arrest the cult leaders yourself—if the juju didn't harm you at the time how could it possibly harm you now? And merely by looking at it? (2.24)
Jane thinks that Amusa's fear is unreasonable, given that he has converted to Islam (and therefore shouldn't believe that the costumes have any real power) and since he arrested the men who originally owned the costumes, which seems a lot more potentially dangerous, "juju"-wise than seeing two British folks in egungun-wear. So she basically tells him not to feel the way he feels because it's not rational… because that kind of reasoning always works on people. Not.
Quote #3
It is native law and custom. The King die last month. Tonight is his burial. But before they can bury him, the Elesin must die so as to accompany him to heaven. (2.68)
Joseph provides some key plot exposition for us when he gives the Pilkingses the down low on the ceremony Elesin will engage in and why. Since they are British (and don't seem super curious about the intricacies of Yoruba culture), they were not previously aware of the ritual.
Quote #4
Don't you remember? He's that chief with whom I had a scrap some three or four years ago. I helped his son get to a medical school in England, remember? He fought tooth and nail to prevent it. (2.75)
Here we learn that Elesin and Simon have already had a run-in over cultural differences: Simon decided that Elesin's son was so promising that he should go to medical school in England, which did not make Elesin happy.
Quote #5
Olunde. Haven't replied to his last letter come to think of it. The old pagan wanted him to stay and carry on some family tradition or the other. Honestly I couldn't understand the fuss he made. I literally had to help the boy escape from close confinement and load him onto the next boat. A most intelligent boy, really bright. (2.77)
Simon seems to have a lot of respect for Olunde… but not so much for the "some family tradition or the other" that made Elesin so upset to lose his oldest son. Do you think Simon only respects Olunde, deep down, for his cultural betrayal?
Quote #6
Who will stop it? Tonight our husband and father will prove himself greater than the laws of strangers. (3.23)
One of the women in the market is basically telling Amusa off for coming to intervene in their preparations for Elesin's suicide, refusing to accept that foreigners or "strangers" can stop their customs. You go, girl.
Quote #7
And let's have no more superstitious nonsense from you Amusa or I'll throw you in the guardroom for a month and feed you pork! (4.28)
Simon Pilkings is exercising his trademark cultural (in)sensitivity by railing against Amusa for being scared of the egungun costumes and threatening him with the prospect of eating pork, which as a Muslim, he presumably avoids. At least Simon understands that much about other religions/customs?
Quote #8
No I am not shocked Mrs. Pilkings. You forget that I have now spent four years among your people. I discovered that you have no respect for what you do not understand. (4.67)
In one of the better burns of the play, Olunde calls out Jane and the British for just riding roughshod over anything that doesn't make complete sense to them.
Quote #9
JANE: But surely, in a war of this nature, for the morale of the nation you must expect . . .
OLUNDE: That a disaster beyond human reckoning be spoken of as a triumph? No. I mean, is there no mourning in the home of the bereaved that such blasphemy is permitted?
JANE [after a moment's pause]: Perhaps I can understand you now. The time we picked for you was not really one for seeing us at our best. (4.111-113)
And the Get Over Yourself Award definitely goes to Jane for this gem. The notion that Jane and Simon could "pick" the moment or manner in which Olunde analyzes the British and their culture is pretty condescending and implies an impossible level of control over other people and their perceptions.
Quote #10
It is when the alien hand pollutes the source of will, when a stranger force of violence shatters the mind's calm resolution, this is when a man is made to commit the awful treachery of relief, commit in his thought the unspeakable blasphemy of seeing the hand of the gods in this alien rupture of the world. I know it was this thought that killed me, sapped my powers and turned me into an infant in the hands of unnamable strangers. I made to utter my spells anew but my tongue merely rattled in my mouth. I fingered hidden charms and the contact was damp; there was no spark left to sever the life-strings that should stretch from every finger-tip. My will was squelched in the spittle of an alien race, and all because I had committed the blasphemy of thought—that there might be the hand of the gods in a stranger's intervention. (5.87)
So, Elesin is kinda-sorta blaming foreign interference for his failure… and also kind of not. In his view, he used it as an excuse, thinking (in a moment of "blasphemy") that the gods might be using the British to intervene and save him. Of course, he now believes that assumption to have been wrong.