Dead Mens Path Theme Analysis Literature Essay

Dead Mens Path paper Analysis Literature EssayDead Mens Path is a unawares tosh written in 1972 by African Author Chinua Achebe. It is to the highest degree Michael obi, a young and energetic man excited or so tout ensemble things newfangled who is exactly assigned a position to run a traditional inform. Not long into the job, he finds that along with his misguided zeal, ignoring the traditions of his passel can have great consequences. obi is a b expert and gaga young man who is excited to find out that he leave behind be the new headmaster of a school that has been in dreadful need of help for some time. Obi was considered a pivotal nurtureer and he and his wife are both forward thinking and eager to share the modern life with everyone. Chinua Achebe shows the Obis modern enthusiasm by piece of writing We shall do our best, she Obis wife) replied. We shall have such beautiful gardens and everything will be equitable modern and delightful He also shows Obis views o f the traditionalist raft by attacking their character referring to them as, these old and superannuated people in the statement field. Of his two goals for the school, one was to grant the grounds a place of beauty. An forth advance inspection was the utter(a) motivation to begin what he thought 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 village who straitss full-strength across the flowers onto what Obe discovers to be an old faint almost unused pass. Obi speaks to a teacher and finds out exactly what the racetrack was used for. It amazes me, say 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 foot passageway. It is simply incredible. He shook his head. The path, the teacher said apologetically, appears to be very important to them. Although it is hardly used, it connects the vi llage shrine with their place of burial. Obi didnt care about the reason and for fear that the coming inspector whitethorn 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 plugged 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 strait the path.Look here my son, this path was here before you were born and before your start was born. The whole life of the village dep lasts on it. Our dead relatives depart 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 quizzical replied to him Dead men dont walk. he dismissed his ancestry and instead chose the modern way. The path remained blocked and a few da ys later a village woman died in childbirth. The villagers took that as a sign that if the path remains blocked they would suffer great misfortune. Believing that the mother would be unable to rest in ease and the child unable to walk the path and enter the world, the villagers became agitated and tore cumulus a school building as well 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 on the whole 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 treasure for the elders and their traditions the narrator clearly has taken sides with the villagers. Chinua Achebe writes, The whole purpose of our school is to remove such beliefs as that. Dead men do not withdraw footpaths. The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your child ren to laugh at such ideas. The main point in question in the story is in reference to the villagers beliefs and customs and the importance it held in their lives. Obi was price 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 destruction and rejection of something that was and is important to people such as traditions no weigh how old the customs may be, nobody has the right to negate a persons background and nobody has the ability to remove a persons belief and metamorphose it with their own. An unfamiliar closes belief may seem fanciful but to those who mean it, it is as much a vital part of their lives as applied science is in ours. The heart of a persons belief is in having faith although what you weigh can never be proven. What happens in close 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 loved ones are in a better place rather than in the ground or left as ashes. People need that faith to carry 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 experience 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 tear 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 collection of people who believe alike 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 th e core of a peoples beliefs which, with his questioning reply to the priest is just what he tried to do. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas. It is important to remember and to honor traditions. umteen people fight to keep their traditions alive, whether its an old woman making her eightieth 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 dancing to celebrate the coming rain. In Achebes story, the people fought to keep the path deliver 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.