"Dead Men's Path"

"Dead Men's Path"

by Chinua Achebe

     The story "Dead Men's Path" is about a man named Obi who was appointed as the new headmaster of Ndume Central School. He now had the chance to show the people what he can do in running a school. Together with his wife, they ran the school pretty good and made some changes that beautify the whole school. After admiring his works, he then saw this faint signs of almost disused path which he thought that this "path" would be an, somehow, ugly spot or scenery to his school. So he decided to put up a fence and close the "path." What he doesn't know is that, that "path" he just closed is a part of the village's tradition. That "path" is very important to the villagers and somehow it connects the village shrine with their place of burial. So what happened in the end, a priest talked to Mr. Obi to open the path again so there will be no conflict BUT Mr. Obi insisted on opening the path again. What happened is that the villagers get mad and destroyed all his hard works on that school.

     So basically, the story is about the new versus the old, the modernization of things versus the traditions that's been practiced for many years. The story focuses on the importance of tradition. Because, as we all know, tradition is always being practiced and no one can just take that away. Tradition has been a part of the living of people.

     Chinua Achebe's place in Africa, their African culture has been colonized by the European but still they practiced their old tradition. They didn't give up on their possessions (culture) because it is important to them. Like in the Philippines, we all know that modernization is now the trend of the nation, wala ngang nagpapahuli sa uso ika nga. But even though modernization is being done, we still practiced our old tradition, like saying "po" and "opo" to the elderlies, eating together at the table with the whole family, and even those superstitious beliefs are also being practiced up until now (maybe some of them), and other stuffs. So you see, even the "new" came in still we can't take away the "old". We can't just forget them because the "old" is also the reason who/what we are now.