Death Man's Path Analysis

|Dead Men’s Path by Chinua Achebe |

|Brief summary |
|Dead Men’s Path is about a young man, Michael Obi, who is made headmaster of a school in order to modernize it. |
|Michael and his wife Nancy both want to improve academic standards and to turn the school compound into a place of beauty. |
|One day he sees an old woman from the village walk straight through the flower beds, and one of the teachers informs him that a path connecting the |
|village shrine with the burial place crosses the schoolyard. This is the kind of old-fashioned superstition Michael wants to wipe out, so he closes the|
|path. |
|The village priest – the Ani – asks him politely to re-open it because of its importance for the villagers. |
|They believe that their dead use it to leave the village, that it gives their ancestors access for visits and that it is used by babies wanting to be |
|born in the village. Obi, however, refuses to re-open the path. |
|Two days later, a young woman dies in childbirth and the villagers blame Obi for blocking the path. |
|They destroy the garden and part of the school. When the school inspector ( the white Supervisor) arrives that very same day , Michael receives a very|
|bad report, which blames him for causing some kind of ‘tribal war’. |

|Structure of the plot |
|The plot is very straightforward. Once the reader has recognized Michael’s intolerance , he expects some sort of conflict with the local people. |
|Exposition: Michael Obi , the main character, is introduced in the first paragraph. After the optimistic |
|description of his energy and desire to change things, he condemns other headmasters for |
|their narrow views. The reader’s interest is aroused and we wonder if he will be successful. |
|Rising tension; foreshadowing: At first things go well, but problems arise when Obi notices that the |
|villagers are walking through the new garden. When he asks one of the teachers about it he |
|learns that this has happened before and that “there was a big row” when they tried to close |
|it. When Obi ignores this warning another row is inevitable. |
|We notice a further foreshadowing of a clash when the priest explains that the most |
|important function of the path is that it is used by babies coming to the village to be born. |
|Climax and ending: The climax follows quickly after the second foreshadowing, when a woman dies in |
|childbirth and the villagers blame Obi for closing the path. As a result they destroy the |
|garden and part of the school. |

|Setting |
|The authors of the stories in the first grouping (Colonial Encounters) took the British readers they were writing for on a journey to distant , exotic |
|places, which many of the readers would probably never be able to visit themselves. To take them on this journey it was necessary to include |
|descriptive passages |
|of jungles, tropical forests, rice paddies and the African veld. |
|The authors of the stories in the second grouping (Cross-Cultural Experiences ) stress the fact that they are writing for their own people. Achebe uses|
|no detailed descriptions. Instead, place names (Ndume, |
|Onitscha), the family name Obi, the term Ani and the fact that hibiscus and allamanda hedges grow in the garden, indicate that the setting is Nigeria. |
|The schoolyard: As a compound, the schoolyard represents not only the area of colonial rule but also of Western education and of order, contrasting |
|sharply with the village which represents traditional indigenous beliefs, and as such it is clearly defined. |
|Therefore the schoolyard is, in the truest sense of the word, a contact zone and a crossroads of cultures. |

|Characters |
|Michael Obi |
|Michael, a young man in his mid-20s,but looks over 30, has undergone a Western education, in the course of which he has himself adopted a colonialist |
|mindset. He sees it as his duty, as an agent of modernization, to enlighten his fellow Nigerians by showing them that their native beliefs are nothing |
|more than superstition, and by creating colonial order out of indigenous chaos. |
|He is convinced that by showing ‘the natives’ the error of their ways and by establishing what seems to him to be colonial order he will make a good |
|impression on the white Education Authorities. |
|He is ambitious and enthusiastic, but at the same time intolerant and arrogant and does not recognize that, when the Ani visits him, he might |
|establish a dialogue between two cultures leading to peaceful interaction, and that a compromise would establish mutual (gegenseitigen) respect. |
|Nancy |
|Michael and Nancy can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Never once does she question her husband’s aims, realizing that in supporting him she |
|herself could also establish her position within the hierarchy. Nancy, however, is not interested in using modern methods to improve teaching |
|standards, |
|only in her own prestige. |
|The Ani |
|Michael and the priest are total opposites. The Ani is quiet and modest and merely asks Michael to respect the traditions of the villagers and their |
|ancestors. He is the one who reveals the tolerance which Michael lacks and who suggests a compromise which would lead to peaceful co-existence. |

|Themes |
|Cultural exchange |
|To say the story ‘Dead Men’s Path’ deals with a clash of cultures would be too simple. |
|The underlying message of the story is that modernization cannot be imposed on people in an |
|authoritarian way. Obi fails because he does not realize how strong the village traditions are. His lack of respect for ancient customs and beliefs |
|leads to conflict and results in the failure of his project. |
|Achebe is not necessarily saying that modern ways are bad, only that long-standing traditions cannot be changed overnight and never without the |
|cooperation of the people concerned. |

|Point of View |
|The omniscient third-person narrator, who avoids any type of direct comment, moves freely between the characters, using both direct and indirect |
|speech. |
|Irony: Michael is accused of having caused tribal war because of his ‘misguided zeal’, but it was precisely this zeal that Michael hoped would impress |
|the Supervisor. |
|The story describes one single incident. |
|Style |
|Achebe uses different modes of language to characterize the protagonists. The language of Michael and Nancy characterizes them as products of a western|
|form of education. |
|The language of the village priest reflects his native language. One of the main features is the use of proverbs . “Let the hawk perch and let the |
|eagle perch” would be a solution to the conflict. |
|Proverbs and folklore are very important to the Ibo tribe. Achebe believes that folklore embodies the moral and spiritual wisdom of a culture and |
|often provide solutions to a people’s problems. |
|The schoolyard: The beautiful schoolyard stands for order and its destruction represents the chaos |
|which results when order is imposed on people against their will. |

|The author |
|Achebe is one of the most prominent African writers of English, and his novels have been translated into many languages. |
|His work reflects his concern with the effects of modern Western values on traditional African society. |
|As an Ibo educated in a missionary school he experienced this clash at first hand. But he has always stressed that , instead of feeling torn between |
|the two cultures, he regarded it as a great advantage to be able to profit from both. |
|He is a combination of European and Ibo cultural influences, a ‘hybrid’, or a mixture of previously different cultural elements. |

|Links to other stories |
|Mimicry (Nachahmung) --- ‘imitation’ of white colonial behaviour in rejecting traditional African |
|culture ( “A Meeting in the Dark” (Stanley) , “An Outpost of Progress” |
|( Makola learns from the colonizers how to be ruthless ) |
|Failure ---- no longer linked with the loneliness of colonizers in alien environments, but as a result of a |
|process of acculturation or a clash of cultures ( “ A Meeting in the Dark “ |
|Clashes between different cultural norms --> “A Horse and Two Goats”, “APair of Jeans”, “My |
|Son the Fanatic” |

Links: to other stories | |Mimicry (Nachahmung) --- ‘imitation’ of white colonial behaviour in rejecting traditional African | |culture ( “A Meeting in the Dark” (Stanley) , “An Outpost of Progress” | |( Makola learns from the colonizers how to be ruthless ) | |Failure ---- no longer linked with the loneliness of colonizers in alien environments, but as a result of a | |process of acculturation or a clash of cultures ( “ A Meeting in the Dark “ | |Clashes between different cultural norms --> “A Horse and Two Goats”, “APair of Jeans”, “My | |Son the Fanatic” |