2. Chinua Achebe's "Dead Men's Path" is a story about a man; Michael Obi and a Nigerian village and their struggle to meet personal compromise.
1. Michael Obi was appointed headmaster of Ndume School and decided to make it more
modernized, covering up an "old path" that ran through the school grounds.
1. Michael was a very dominant, controlling man that wanted to create a new way of
teaching for the children of Ndume school, brining in a more modern approach and
eliminate the traditions that once controlled the school. ("And what has that got to do
with the school?" (57).)
2. Michael knew full well what the path meant to the village however his arrogance
controlled his decision in covering the path with a bit of barbed wire, bushes and
flowers. ("Heavy sticks were planted closely across the path at the two places where it
entered and left the school premises" (64-65).)
2. The path running through the school was an old tradition of the village, that their dead would
take to their burial ground. The village demanded that it be uncovered, so it could still be
used.
1. The village's priest visited the headmaster to explain the importance of the path.
Stressing the beliefs the path has on the people of the village and that this tradition
was much more important than the "modernism" Michael was trying to promote.
2. "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" (77-79).
3. Compromise could not be decided upon by both the headmaster and the priest.
1. The headmaster said the path could not run through the school grounds, however they
could let it skirt their premisses and they would offer to help reconstruct it. The priest
disagreed said the path had to remain in the same spot and if the path remained
blocked a person of the village will perish.
2. A short time after a young woman died giving birth and Michael woke to his school and
premises ruined by the angry villagers.
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