Explication Essays - Writers, Igbo People, Fiction, Dead Mens Path

Explication Essays - Writers, Igbo People, Fiction, Dead Mens Path Elisha Wallace ENGL 104, Sophomore Seminar I Explication The short story titled "Dead Men's Path" written by Chinua Achebe is about a man filled with hope trying to build a school which was once a ruin into a modern place of education. Even though he seemed to have good intentions his arrogance led him to fail and the short story ended with the school back to its unkempt state. The writer uses the priests dialogue to portray the theme of balance. My explication will be on the last six paragraphs of this short story in which Mr. Obi speaks to the priest and ignores his wise advice. This plot is a traditional "old versus new" where tradition goes head to head against modernization. In the end they realize that balance and a sense of understanding is what they need for peace. Mr. Obi is the new and young headmaster of Ndume school. He has a lot of ideas and changes he wants to make in order to elevate not only the school but the students as well. "Obi accepted this responsibility with enthusiasm. He had many wonderful ideas and this was an opportunity to put them into practice" (Kennedy and Gioia 187). One day Obi sees a woman crossing through the flowers in the compound and is informed that the village people cross through the compound to get to the burial. He blocks off the pathway and is quickly confronted by the priest. The priest is polite but firm in his opinion with Obi. He asks Obi for peace and balance in the hopes that Mr. Obi will open back up the pathway. But Obi is stubborn and insists that the village men and woman create a new way around th e school. "... I would suggest your constructing another path, skirting our premises I don't suppose the ancestors will find the little detour too burdensome" (Kennedy and Gioia 189). From this quote we can also see that Obi has a slight attitude and arrogance with his response to the old and wise priest. He is firm in his belief that the pathway is not of importance. A while later a young village woman dies and as a result the school is completely trashed and the protagonist, Obi, is left with a terrible review of his school. The setting of this short story contributed a great deal in developing the plot. The village is inferred to be small and tight knit with a strong sense of community. This helps readers understand why a large amount of the older village men and women are upset at Obi for blocking away the path to the burial. When the young woman dies it seems like effort of the community is what destroyed the school. "The beautiful hedges were torn up not just near the path but right around the school, the flowers trampled to death and one of the school buildings pulled down" (Kennedy and Gioia 189) "Dead Men's Path" is in third person omniscient. We can see that because the author uses words like he/she. This short story is omniscient because in one part of the story we can see the wife's point of view and how she thinks of her husband but the entire passage is usually in Mr. Obi's point of view. "He was stoop-shouldered and looked frail. But he sometimes surprised people with sudden bursts of physical energy" (Kennedy and Gioia 187). With this quote we get to see into the mind of the wife for just a moment. To find any symbols in this passage you really had to look deep and take everything as an interpretation of something else. I took the title, "The Dead Men's Path" as an object of symbolism. Not to describe the literal pathway to the burial ground but the path that Mr. Obi had chosen. The priest tried to show him the philosophy of balance. The philosophy of balance is an idea that shows up in many religions. It is the idea that you have to have a sense of balance in the world. Whether is be good and evil, right and wrong, or just simply up and down (Darren "The philosophy of balance").