Dead Men’s Path.

How hard is it to change things in the society when they do not make sense in the current society? There is always only one way to find out which is trying to effect the said change. The people in the society will always resist and frustrate change. Chinua Achebe in his short story “Dead Men’s Path” talks about the power and effect of a change in the society. Western education and African traditions and beliefs cannot share a platform without a conflict of interests coming in between. The short story highlights the conflict that came about when the first African’s were educated and taken back to the places where they came from to teach. They were taught that education was the key to everything life has to offer. They also seemed to have been prepared that those who had not gone to school would listen to every word from the learned people. They then abandoned their cultures and tried to force everybody to see things their way. This kind of attempts during the colonial period never ended well for the educated Africans who adopted the western modernity.

The colonialist gave a few Africans an education to have better control over them. For instance, whenever they set up a school according to Achebe’s short story they would post an African head teacher and send inspectors to the schools to monitor their work. It was their way of making sure that the Africans were always going to be under their watch. Whatever they gave to the Africans, they did so that they could use the learned Africans to their advantage. It is for this reason that when Michael Obi was appointed a headteacher, a white Government Education Officer was sent to visit the school to see its condition and how things were running. “What will the Government Education Officer think of this when he comes to inspect the school next week?” (Chinua, 1972) Obi was clearly under the control of the whites, and it is not hard to find that even he did not know they were just using him to impose their will on the African people.

Michael Obi was employed by the whites to do things that they could not do while they were still trying to make the Africans accept their policies as part of their society. Obi was sent to the school to be the headteacher and the whites expected that he would know how to manipulate his people into accepting the western religion, education and way of life. Obi, on the other hand, knew what he was supposed to do but not how to do it. The school gave him an education but not knowledge. He ignored all the customs and cultures of his people and lived the life of a white man. “What has that got to do with the school?” by merely asking that question he was disrespecting the culture of his people (Chinua, 1972). He trashed their beliefs and even said that the education by the white man was supposed to help eradicate these beliefs. The African people hold dearly their customs and, therefore, the white man and his ideas was not about to change their lifestyle by educating one of them. Obi failed in his test as to how good a leader he could be even with all the education he had, he could not be a good leader like the uneducated old men he despised.

The conflict between formal education and native knowledge and beliefs is very evident in the text by Achebe. Michael Obi thought that being educated was a prestigious factor, and it was. However, his people did not see him as such a great man when he did not respect their customs and beliefs. He even said to the priest, “The whole purpose of our school is to eradicate beliefs as that. Dead men do not require footpaths. The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas.” Looking at this speech, it is evident that Obi had no respect for the people who were not educated by the white man’s education. By telling the old man that his school was supposed to teach their children not to respect their traditions was also a wrong decision. The old man must have seen that the education was useless and if anything, destructive to the existence of the traditions of the African society (Chinua, 1972). The way Obi handled the position he had been awarded gave an awful picture of the education he was there to help get to many people.

The conflict between education and African culture also affected the wife of Obi. She thought she was in a unique position and could only think of imposing her modernity on people. She had plans for capitalizing on her husband’s position to show off. She was even disappointed when she realized that all the teachers working with her husband were unmarried. In the African culture, the wife was only supposed to make herself devoted to her husband and her family. When her husband adopted the western way of life, she also thought to show off was part of being westernized.  A factor that she came to see did not even hold water in the African lifestyle when all their work at the school was taken down by the villagers(Chinua, 1972). She appears to be learned while all the other teachers in her mind had married illiterate wives.

Education to Michael had turned him into a proud and arrogant man. He often said, “these old superannuated people in the teaching field who would be better employed as traders in the Onitsha market.” He thought too highly of himself and at the very end it is what brought him down. When he talked to the old man rudely and even insulted the ancestors saying that they could find another way to the edge of the school, he insulted the community as a whole. When the child died maybe it was an accident but it prompted people to destroy the school (Chinua, 1972). They did so for the sake of saving the lives of their people. On the part of Obi, he failed to understand that not all people were willing to abandon their culture for a foreign culture. He had not only received an education, but he also adopted the religion that saw the African religion as paganism. He even went ahead to say that the people may eventually start using the classrooms for their religious activities. He said all this is forgetting the fact that, the African religion had been in existence long before the whites brought their own to the Africans.

The African people after colonization were left with systems of education and a religion that was in conflict with what they had before colonization. The African people traditionally were religious and had their forms of education. People in the precolonial Africa were taught how to live in a society and even how to coexist with each other in peace. After colonization, there was total confusion with a good number of African feeling that the whites lived a real life and emulated them. There was a group of people that took a bit of everything from each of the two divides. They embraced education but retained their religion. There are those who stuck to their traditional lifestyles. In Achebe’s story, all three characters are represented. There were the teachers who had no problem with the footpath passing through the school; they represent the group that took a bit of both worlds. By being teachers and at the same time being supportive of the African religion they had the both worlds in their lives. The old man who warned Obi about the fence he had put up the closing of the paths represents the conservative people in the community. Michael, on the other hand, represented the Africans who embraced westernization and lived like the whites did.

In conclusion, the post-colonial period as portrayed in the book left Africans divided and the whites managed to control them better. In the short story, all aspects of the state of Africa where the colonial powers touched are seen. There is the education for a few who then pass the knowledge down to the rest of the Africans and then there is a condemnation of those who fail. The supervisor wrote a very bad report about Michael and no mention is made of his being guided on how to improve the situation (Chinua, 1972). The colonization of Africa was both a blessing and a problem for the people of the continent.

Work Cited.

Achebe, Chinua, Dead Men’s Path, 1972.