Dead Man's Path

Dead Men’s Path is a short story that was written by Chinua Achebe.  Achebe’s actual full name is Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe. The Nigerian artist was born in 1930. He has a best-selling world renowned book called Things Fall Apart. This book is one of the most read books in African literature nowadays.

The short story Dead Man’s Path is all about tradition and respecting our elders and other cultures.  This story is all about a man, Michael Obi, and his wife, Nancy Obi.  Michael is offered a job at a school as headmaster, which he accepts enthusiastically and his wife, a little less enthusiastically.  The Ndume school he was appointed to was “backward in every sense of the word”.  The Obi’s decided to put all of their time into this school, Michael made sure the teaching was top-notch and his wife made the grounds gorgeous with her “dream-gardens”.

                While making her dream gardens and running the school, the Obi’s noticed that elders from the community were walking right through the gardens and through the school yards.  Michael did not like this at all and he placed sticks and barbed wires and blocked off the path.  The village priest then called Michael and called him out on this.  The priest said that this foot path was how their ancestors visited them and then Michael decided to mock him and tell the priest that that was the reason they closed off the path “The whole purpose of our school… is to eradicate just such beliefs as that… Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas”.  The priest then left and the next day when the Obi’s woke up, their gardens were completely wrecked and even one of the school buildings was torn down.

                I believe that the Obi’s should have respected the elder’s enough to talk this out with them before they put up barbed wire, but the elders should have tried to compromise, saying maybe they wouldn’t walk there during school hours.