Dead Mens Path Theme Analysis Literature Essay

Dead Mens Path Theme Analysis Literature EssayDead Mens Path is a short story written in 1972 by Afri hindquarters Author Chinua Achebe. It is about Michael obeah, a young and energetic man excited about every things modern who is just assigned a position to run a traditional take aim. Not long into the job, he finds that along with his misguided zeal, ignoring the traditions of his masses screwing have great consequences.Obi is a bright and enthusiastic young man who is excited to find out that he will be the upstart maestro of a school that has been in desperate need of help for some time. Obi was considered a pivotal teacher and he and his wife be both forward thinking and eager to share the modern life with everyone. Chinua Achebe shows the Obis modern enthusiasm by writing We shall do our best, she Obis wife) replied. We shall have such splendid gardens and everything will be just modern and de livelyful He overly shows Obis views of the traditionalist people by attacki ng their character referring to them as, these old and superannuated people in the teaching field. Of his two goals for the school, one was to make the grounds a place of beauty. An upcoming inspection was the perfect motivation to begin what he position to be great improvements. In time the gardens blossomed with beautiful red and yellow flowers. As Obi is admiring his work, he comes across an old woman from the colonization who walks not bad(p) across the flowers onto what Obe discovers to be an old faint almost unused path. Obi speaks to a teacher and finds out exactly what the path was used for. It amazes me, said Obi to one of the teachers who had been three years in the school, that you people allowed the villagers to make use of this footpath. It is simply incredible. He shook his head. The path, the teacher said apologetically, appears to be very all-important(a) to them. Although it is hardly used, it connects the village shrine with their place of burial. Obi didnt car e about the reason and for fear that the coming inspector may see people on school grounds who didnt belong, demanded that the footpath be closed off immediately regardless of warnings from the teacher. The path was then obturate with heavy logs and reinforced with barbed wire. A priest was sent by the outraged villagers to try and talk some sense into Obi, pressing upon him the significance that the path has not to just the villagers, but also the dead who walk the path.Look here my son, this path was here before you were born and before your father was born. The whole life of the village depends on it. Our dead relatives conk by it and our ancestors visit us by it. But most important, it is the path of children coming in to be born. Obi rejected the priests words and in nettlesome replied to him Dead men dont walk. he dismissed his ancestry and instead chose the modern way. The path remained blocked and a few days later a village woman died in childbirth. The villagers took th at as a sign that if the path remains blocked they would suffer great misfortune. Believing that the mother would be unable to await in peace and the child unable to walk the path and enter the world, the villagers became agitated and tore down a school building as substantially as everything used to block the path and the flowers planted to impress the inspector. When the inspector finally arrived, he was presented with grounds that were completely destroyed along with a headmaster who thought only about himself and erasing the past to become modern.In the story, with the descriptions of the pretentious headmaster and his lack of respect for the elders and their traditions the narrator clearly has taken sides with the villagers. Chinua Achebe writes, The whole mean of our school is to subvert such beliefs as that. Dead men do not require footpaths. The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to jocularity at such ideas. The main point in question in th e story is in reference to the villagers beliefs and customs and the importance it held in their lives. Obi was wrongfulness in his thinking and in his methods, believing that he can just cut the people off from what in our time would be considered a funeral. When it comes to the close and rejection of something that was and is important to people such as traditions no matter how old the customs may be, aught has the right to negate a persons background and nobody has the ability to remove a persons belief and substitute it with their own. An unfamiliar cultures belief may seem fanciful but to those who believe it, it is as much a vital part of their lives as technology is in ours. The heart of a persons belief is in having faith although what you believe can never be proven. What happens in death is a perfect example of this. Nobody alive can know what happens after death so we are left with our imaginations to hope that our love ones are in a better place rather than in the gro und or left as ashes. People need that faith to moderate on because at times the thought of never again seeing those people can be unbearable. Our ancestors traditions and customs are important because the only acquaintance we have of things we have no proof on is in the things passed down for generations. Just as the story explained, the villagers were so strong in their beliefs of the path that when it became blocked they attacked the school and everything that was blocking the sacred path The beautiful hedges were torn up not just near the path but right around the schoolflowers trampledone of the school buildings torn down The importance of a persons culture is more than just the faith of a single person, it connects a group of people who believe akin and allows them to work together with the same end results. As stated in Achebes Dead Mens Path, contemporary community shouldnt do as Obi and try to eradicate the core of a peoples beliefs which, with his mocking reply to the p riest is just what he tried to do. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas. It is important to commend and to honor traditions. Many people fight to keep their traditions alive, whether its an old woman making her 80th annual pilgrimage to a Mexican cemetery to light a candle at Dona Candelaria de Sapiens grave or Native American tribe members dressed in full ceremonial clothing saltation to celebrate the coming rain. In Achebes story, the people fought to keep the path free so that those who pass on can rest in peace and the traditions of the villagers can carry on for generations to come, far beyond the lives of the priests, villagers and Obi.