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Act 1 Summary of Edufa
Act 1 of Efua T. Sutherland’s Edufa is structurally divided into four scenes. The act introduces the central crisis of the play: Edufa’s wife, Ampoma, is mysteriously and gravely ill.
Act 1, Scene 1 Summary of Edufa
Act 1, Scene 1 of Edufa opens with Edufa retrieving the pots of dew and stream water that Abena collected during the prologue. He urgently instructs someone inside to pour the waters over herbs in the bathroom and to bring out fire for incense. As he does this, the eerie chanting of a Chorus of women performing a funeral dirge (“Our mother’s dead / We the orphans cry”) is heard from outside the courtyard walls.
Seguwa, a matronly member of the household, hurries out of Edufa’s rooms, clearly disturbed by the passing funeral procession. Edufa soon follows, dressed in pajamas and a dressing gown, carrying a box of incense and looking to be under considerable mental strain. Hearing the chant, Edufa nervously asks if the women are coming to his house, but Seguwa assures him they are mourning someone else’s soul.
Edufa instructs Seguwa to keep the incense burning while he and his wife, Ampoma, bathe in the herbs. Seguwa, however, challenges Edufa, expressing her strong doubts that bathing in herbs and burning incense will bring Ampoma any relief. She urges him to call for outside help. She admits that while she swore to share his burden and keep his secret, her “woman’s bowels” (compassion) cannot handle the strain of watching Ampoma suffer without proper intervention.
Edufa dismisses her fears. He insists that they are doing everything they can. He claims that it is Ampoma’s own wish that no one see her. Seguwa retorts that Ampoma is not in her right mind. She points out the cruelty of keeping Ampoma’s own mother ignorant of the severe illness. She notes that the mother is currently pampering Edufa and Ampoma’s children, deceived into thinking she is simply giving the couple time for rest and fun. Edufa defensively insists that Ampoma is getting better, a claim Seguwa scoffs at, reminding him that Ampoma fainted twice the previous night. Feeling they are on a bridge between life and death, Seguwa reluctantly reaffirms her promise to stand by him. Relieved, Edufa asks her to make sure the gate is barred.
Analysis of Act 1, Scene 1
This opening scene establishes a high-stakes, claustrophobic atmosphere and introduces the core conflicts of the play. The offstage Chorus chanting a dirge (“Our mother’s dead… We the orphans cry”) functions as a dark, prophetic omen. While Seguwa notes the mourners are crying for another soul, the chant acts as a direct parallel to the tragedy unfolding inside the house, foreshadowing Ampoma’s impending death and the imminent orphaned state of her children. This creates immediate dramatic tension.
The dialogue between Edufa and Seguwa highlights a clash of approaches to Ampoma’s affliction. Edufa is desperately clinging to ritualistic, supernatural remedies. Seguwa, however, acts as the voice of pragmatism and reason. She recognises that the situation is deteriorating and pleads to “call for help.”
Edufa’s mental state is shown to be frantic and fragile. He insists to Seguwa that Ampoma is “getting better,” a blatant delusion contradicted by the fact that she fainted twice the night before. Furthermore, his command to keep the gate barred and his refusal to inform Ampoma’s own mother of her sickness demonstrate how his secretive actions are severing his family’s ties to their community and support systems.
This scene also depicts Seguwa’s moral dilemma. She is bound by an oath of secrecy to Edufa, but she is deeply troubled by the moral implications of keeping the truth from Ampoma’s family. Her internal conflict establishes the heavy emotional toll Edufa’s secret is taking on the entire household.
Act 1, Scene 2 Summary of Edufa
Act 1, Scene 2 of Edufa begins with Ampoma, Edufa’s wife, suddenly appearing at the top of the steps. She looks unsteady and is in a state of “near insanity.” Seguwa lets out a stifled scream, and Edufa rushes to support his wife as she weakly claims she is “falling.” Ampoma explains that she left her room because there is “no warmth in (her) bed . . . no comfort . . . only darkness.” Edufa gently guides her to a seat in the courtyard. He desperately urges her to believe she is getting well and promises that she will feel better after they bathe in the herbs again.
Ampoma’s mind wanders into tragic, visionary territory. She hallucinates seeing her children as “two little goats struggling on the far-away hillside,” with their eyes glowing lonely in the dark. She weeps for them and wonders what hands will prepare her young daughter for her wedding, which prompts Seguwa to note how merciful it is that the children are not present to witness their mother’s decline. Edufa tries to dismiss her visions as the “monstrous fantasies” of sickness. He pleads with her to think of their bed as the “sunny place in which we plant (their) children,” but Ampoma replies that her bed is now a river of her own tears.
Accepting her impending death, Ampoma forces Edufa to focus on the children she is leaving behind. She expresses a deep, unbearable fear that if Edufa marries another woman, the new wife will envy and harm her children. She demands that Edufa swear a solemn oath never to place her children in another woman’s power by marrying again. To calm her, Edufa swears that no other woman will ever cross his inner door or share his bed.
Immediately after he swears it, Ampoma grows deeply agitated. She states that the sun is getting dark over her. She stretches her hand out to a vision of her children, lamenting, “My love has killed me.” Overcome with faintness, she falls into Edufa’s arms, calling out for her children and her mother. As Edufa and Seguwa carry her back into the room, the eerie chanting of the Chorus (“Our mother’s dead / We the orphans cry”) drifts in again from the distance.
Analysis of Act 1, Scene 2
This scene brings the tragic core of the play to the forefront. It allows the audience to witness Ampoma’s physical and psychological deterioration firsthand. In this scene, the bed, traditionally a symbol of intimacy and life-giving, is tragically inverted. Edufa tries to remind Ampoma that it is the “sunny place in which (they) plant (their) children”; that the bed represents fertility and love. However, Ampoma experiences it only as a place of cold, darkness, and drowning. This contrast symbolises how Edufa’s secret actions have poisoned their marriage at its very root.
A major thematic focus of this scene is the vulnerability of motherless children in a polygamous or remarried household. Ampoma is tormented by the vision of her children as lost, struggling “little goats.” Her insistence that Edufa vow never to marry another woman stems from the fear that a new wife would mistreat her orphans. This intensely personal anxiety perfectly aligns with the dirge being sung by the Chorus outside (“We the orphans cry”), linking her private tragedy with a broader, communal archetype of grief.
Edufa continues to act as a man terrified of the truth. When Ampoma speaks of her impending death and weeping, he dismisses her fears as “monstrous fantasies” brought on by sickness. His inability to face the reality of what he has done forces him into a state of continuous denial, desperately trying to convince his dying wife that she is recovering.
The most tragic revelation of the scene is Ampoma’s realisation that her own devotion is the source of her doom. She explicitly states, “My love has killed me.” Earlier, she notes, “how good that I should not be the one to live beyond your days.” This introduces the central irony of the play: Ampoma’s pure, innocent love for her husband is exactly what the supernatural charm exploited to claim her life in his place.
Act 1, Scene 3 Summary of Edufa
Act 2, Scene 3 of Edufa is a brief but emotionally charged solo scene featuring Seguwa. It begins immediately after she and Edufa have carried the fainting, hallucinating Ampoma back into her room.
Seguwa returns to the courtyard alone, where she expresses deep frustration and bewilderment at the unbearable situation they are living with. She is disturbed by Ampoma’s physical weakness and her “calamitous” and “mystified” talk of water and drowning. Feeling that the situation is escalating out of control, she declares that they should all confront Edufa and demand answers.
Approaching the brazier, she throws more incense onto the fire but physically withdraws from it as if she despises the ritual. In a powerful soliloquy, Seguwa bitterly laments the “lock on my lips” that forces her to keep Edufa’s secret. She explicitly condemns Edufa’s actions, stating that no human being has the right to “stake another’s life for his own.”
Her thoughts then turn to Ampoma’s mother. Seguwa cries out in anguish (“Ah, Mother! Mother!”), tormented by the fact that the mother’s womb is being wronged while she remains entirely ignorant of her daughter’s agonising decline. Seguwa notes that Ampoma, out of pure devotion to the man she married, is keeping her own suffering hidden from her family. Weighed down by these secrets, Seguwa repeatedly swears that Edufa has “done Ampoma wrong” before angrily returning to tend the burning incense.
Analysis of Act 1, Scene 3
Though it is the shortest scene in the act, Scene 3 is a pivotal moment in the play. It functions almost like a classical soliloquy that clarifies the moral stakes of the drama. Up until this point, the audience has only seen Edufa’s frantic remedies and heard Abena’s suspicions. Seguwa’s monologue provides the first direct confirmation of the exact nature of Edufa’s crime. Her declaration that he has “staked another’s life for his own” explicitly reveals to the audience that Edufa has orchestrated a trade of lives, shifting his character from a desperate, grieving husband to a morally culpable figure.
In this scene, Seguwa acts as the voice of the audience’s conscience. She recognises the profound injustice of what is happening behind closed doors. Her desire to “break (the) lock on (her) lips” highlights her intense internal conflict: she is trapped between her sworn loyalty to Edufa and her fundamental sense of human decency.
Seguwa’s repeated invocations of Ampoma’s mother (“Ah, Mother! Mother!”) strongly emphasise the play’s focus on maternal bonds and the ripple effects of grief. By pointing out the cruelty of keeping a mother ignorant while her daughter dies, Seguwa underscores how Edufa’s selfishness is actively destroying communal and familial ties.
Additionally, Seguwa’s interaction with the incense is highly symbolic. She tends the fire but “withdraws from it as if she hates it” and returns to it “angrily.” The incense represents Edufa’s desperate, perhaps futile, supernatural machinations. Seguwa’s resentful tending of the fire visually demonstrates her forced complicity in a ritual and a cover-up that repulses her.
Act 1, Scene 4 Summary of Edufa
Act 1, Scene 4 of Edufa opens with the unexpected arrival of Kankam, Edufa’s father, who has not set foot in the house for three years due to a bitter falling out with his son. Seguwa is relieved to see him. She hopes he can help Edufa and save the gravely ill Ampoma. Edufa emerges and reacts with hostility, questioning why his estranged father has returned.
Kankam cuts directly to the point, demanding “the life of (his) wife Ampoma, from (him).” He reveals that he knows Edufa’s dark secret. Kankam had visited his own diviner, who saw a vision revealing that four years ago, Edufa visited a diviner to ask how to avert a prophesied death. To save himself, Edufa was given a powerful charm and told he must get someone to swear an oath to die in his place.
Kankam meticulously recounts the day the fatal oath was sworn. Edufa had come home restless and moody, then suddenly asked his family, in a tone of “studied carelessness,” who loved him enough to die for him. Kankam jokingly refused, stating, “Die your own death. I have mine to die.” Tragically, the devoted Ampoma spoke up and innocently swore she would die for him, unwittingly sealing her fate. Kankam further reveals that later that night, a terrified Edufa showed Ampoma the charm, confessed its power, and desperately tried to make her forswear the oath, but the spiritual contract was already bound.
Kankam begs Edufa to confess his crime publicly, bring out the evil charm, and burn it. He is hoping that the corporate prayers of the household might still save Ampoma. Edufa stubbornly denies the accusations and swears there is no ground for worry, a lie that horrifies Kankam, who warns his son not to curse his own house and children. Kankam attributes Edufa’s downfall to his obsession with status and wealth—his desire to “buy friends by street benevolence” and his need for the town’s flattery. Defensively, Edufa accuses his father of simply being envious of his success. Disgusted, Kankam leaves to pray for Ampoma, refusing to expose Edufa to the town, preferring to let the town eventually discover they are bowing to a “worm.”
Once alone, Edufa delivers a tormented soliloquy. He breaks down, wishing he could call his father back to weep on his shoulder. He admits his guilt but claims he never truly believed the charm would work; he had bought it cynically as a “mystic symbol” to calm his own irrational fears. He realises that his mockery of traditional beliefs has now trapped him, and he is frantic with the knowledge that his wife’s life is the price of his cowardice.
Analysis of Act 1, Scene 4
This is the climactic scene of the first act. It shifts the play from a mood of mysterious dread into a direct moral confrontation. It unveils the truth about Ampoma’s illness. In this regard, Kankam is depicted as the agent of truth in a house built on secrets and locked gates. While Edufa has successfully hidden his crime from the town and even his own sister, he cannot hide it from the spiritual realm (the diviners) or from his father. Kankam strips away Edufa’s excuses, forcing both Edufa and the audience to confront the exact, cowardly nature of the crime.
The conflict between father and son highlights the play’s thematic focus on the corrupting nature of wealth and prestige. Kankam notes that Edufa is “insane for gain” and “frantic for the fluff of flattery.” Edufa’s superficial philanthropy is exposed as a hollow shield for a deeply insecure man. His willingness to sacrifice another life is ultimately tied to his desperate need to maintain his privileged position in society.
Edufa claims to be an educated, “emancipated” man who has moved to a higher plane of living, scoffing at diviners. However, his soliloquy reveals the tragic irony of his situation: despite his supposed intellectual superiority, his deep-seated insecurities drove him to dabble in occult practices he didn’t even respect. He treated the deadly charm as a mere psychological comfort, only to find himself completely constrained by the very forces he mocked.
Kankam explicitly challenges Edufa’s manhood, asking if he has the “courage that makes responsible men.” In this society, a husband is meant to be the protector of his wife. By tricking Ampoma into taking his death, Edufa has inverted the natural order. Furthermore, the scene emphasises the tragic breakdown of the father-son bond. Edufa longs for his father’s comfort but is too terrified and proud to admit his fault and ask for help, resulting in his total moral isolation.
Related:
- Prologue Summary and Analysis of Edufa by Efua T. Sutherland
- Act 2 to Act 3 Summary and Analysis of Edufa by Efua T. Sutherland
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