Name: Kyara M.

Robles De Gracia

Prof. Almansa

GEEN 2312

Date: 29/October/2021

“Dead Men’s Path” by Chinua Achebe

Answer questions after you read the story carefully.

1. What kind of man is Michael Obi? Describe this character and include at least one quotation

directly from the story.

Michael Obi was a studied, zealous, energetic, and brilliant young man, he had wonderful and

modern ideas ready to implement them wherever he went. He also had a very progressive outlook

on the world and its modernization specifically in the education area, just like his wife too. (¨He

had many wonderful ideas, and this was an opportunity to put them into practice…¨) (¨In their

two years of married life she had become completely infected by his passion for “modern

methods” and his denigration of “these old and superannuated people in the teaching field who

would be better employed as traders in the Onitsha market… ¨).

2. Mention the key difficulties Michael Obi has in the village. Explain the main conflict of the

plot.

Some of the difficulties Obi has in the village are the traditions and the beliefs the villagers

possessed, the school´s backward in every sense and a path that crossed the school grounds to

where the villagers lived, which Michael Obi found unnecessary so he wanted to cover it with

his beautiful garden, disrespecting the divine meaning it had to the villagers and the

consequences that could bring if it were to disappear.

3. What is Nancy, Obi’s wife, like? Why do you think Achebe describes her as “imitating the

women's magazine she read”?

She was just like Michael Obi, she had the same ideas of modernizing and renovating

aesthetically everything, so I think what Achebe meant by her imitating the women’s magazine

she read I believe she was doing exactly the same thing she did with her husband: being like

them. Also, I feel like she wanted to live a kind of life that she knew she couldn't have anywhere

else, something like a fantasy, she showed she had almost like the urge, the need of being

worshipped by others, so in this place where everything and everyone is so backward, she

wanted to be the center of it all.

4. First, explain what you believe is the theme of the story. Then, explain how the fate of the

school garden reflects upon the story's theme.

I believe the theme of this story is the conflict between traditionalism and modernism, the

conflict between cultural differences and different beliefs. I think imposing new norms by force

on a long-lasting culture should never happen.

I think the school garden represents the new ideas that Mr. Obi and his wife wanted to impose

in that place disrespecting the culture, so when it got destroyed by the villagers it reflected that

establishing rules forcefully and out of nowhere and over a nation which already had its own

beliefs, could be dangerous and could initiate a war.

5. In the end, the school is the “ruins of his work.” Why has this happened? What is the author,

Chinua Achebe, suggesting with this ending to the story?

The school is a representation of the ruins of his work, meaning all those modern ideas and

projects he had, went down and got destroyed just like how the villagers did to the school

compound. He tried to force in a new vision and didn´t even for once consider what the habitants

of that place would think about all these foreign ideas and new environment he wanted to create.

By not respecting the culture and traditions of a people, and at the same time not being wise with

his decisions, everything he dreamed of doing ended in failure.