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“Dead Men’s Path”

“Dead Men’s Path”. Chinua Achebe Michael Owino Hannah Martinez Carla Paniagua . Author. Born in Nigeria in 1930 His father was a missionary school teacher.

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“Dead Men’s Path”

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  1. “Dead Men’s Path” Chinua Achebe Michael Owino Hannah Martinez Carla Paniagua

  2. Author • Born in Nigeria in 1930 • His father was a missionary school teacher. • In 1999 he visited Nigeria after a deliberate 9 year absence to protest the government dictatorship. His homecoming was a national event. • He is considered Africa’s premier novelist. • In 2007 he was awarded the second Man Booker International prize for his writing.

  3. Plot Summary • Michael Obi is appointed headmaster of a non-progressive missionary school. In his efforts to make the school more modern he closes down a path that is significant to the villagers because they believe that their ancestors and new babies travel through it. He has a confrontation with the village priest and decides to keep the path closed. After a village woman dies in childbirth the villagers destroy the school grounds and Obi is fired.

  4. Theme • One’s virtue and unwillingness to compromise can also be their demise.

  5. Characterization • Obi has the virtue of being progressive, modern, and prideful; but in the end it was what caused him to fall. • The priest benefitted from Obi’s fall because his tradition of his village was restored.

  6. Setting • The story was set in a rural area. • The time was January 1949. • The time frame is significant because it was the period of “Demarcation of Africa” when the European powers were colonizing Africa. • The season was significant because it was spring and Obi was admiring his flowers, when he noticed the woman trampling through them.

  7. Tone and Style • The author picks a limited narrator so the reader can see both sides of the story. He selects Obi to be young, naïve, and hopeful; and selects the priest to be traditional and conservative to show the battle between old and new. Traditionalism wins because Obi was unwilling to compromise. • The author’s father was a missionary schoolteacher, the author might be trying to relate his father to Obi.

  8. Symbol • Obi is the symbol of progressivism. • The priest is the symbol of traditionism. • The flowers are a symbol of Obi’s ideas and how they are crushed at the end.

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