Dead Man's Path

You wake up in the morning. You’re on your way out of your house. Soon you are confronted with a path. Your start to walk down this path, but soon it falls from under your feet into thin air never to be seen again. In the story "Dead Man’s Path" by Chinua Achebe Mr. Obi wants to get rid of this path that goes through the school yard, but when the village priest finds out about it he doesn’t want the path to move, because it was put there by the town’s ancestors. Mr. Obi thinks that this town could benefit from this because it is new and improved, but is new always better? Some main aspects of this story are the characters, symbolism, and the whole meaning of the story.

The main character in this story is Mr. Obi. Mr. Obi was just appointed headmaster of Ndume Central School, and he thinks he has some great ideas for the school. Obi means “heart” and Mr. Obi has a lot of it when he is trying to improve the school. What Mr. Obi doesn’t realize though is that the path set through the school yard is a landmark for that town. Mr. Obi is a brilliant man, but that doesn’t mean that changing this tradition is the right thing to do.

Even though the characters in the story are very important the symbolism is just as vital. Symbolism is important to this story because it can give you clues to whether or not something good or bad will happen in the story. “…dream-gardens came to life with the coming of the rains, and blossomed(477).” This sentence is about a garden, and gardens usually bring new life to things which could mean something good is about to happen.

The symbolism is very important to the story, but so is the meaning of the title. The title of the story is Dead Man's Path, but there is no secret that there is a deeper meaning to the story than a path that has a dead man on it. In the story when the priest comes to inspect the school and finds out that Mr. Obi wants to redo the path that goes through the school yard the priest is devastated because that path was a local landmark that the town's ancestors were buried under.

The main focus of this story are the characters, symbolism, and the complete meaning of the story. This story tries to show that even though something may be new it is not always better. Things that are traditional aren’t always the most popular thing for people, but it can also be very important to others.