Symbolism In Dead Man's Path By Chinua Achebe

In his famous short story “Dead Man’s Path”, Chinua Achebe eloquently painted the picture of a story dripping with both irony and hidden truth. He chose to artfully convey a message he felt personally important to his readership, and did so quite successfully. His message, and the overall theme of the story, is that we, as modern humans whose civilization is built upon a bedrock of ancient cultures, beliefs, and mores, need to respect and accept our heritage, lest our arrogance force us to lose touch with where we came from. Achebe illustrates this complex and deeply fascinating theme exceptionally well in just a few short pages, through use of many different literary devices throughout the story. Most notably, he makes artful use of the title, …show more content…
Obi is a native Nigerian man who has abandoned his cultural heritage, in favor of ‘modern’ Western ideals. He and his wife see the school that he was appointed to lead as ‘backwards in every sense of the word’ (Achebe), and seek to reform it in order to create their ideal, ‘modern’ school based on the Western tradition. This may be for the purpose of impressing his white employers, or perhaps it is simply Obi’s preference to have adopted a different cultural perspective of the world. It would appear that Obi is used to caricature those Achebe is attempting to write about; the ‘modern’ people who have decided to abandon tradition and identity for the allures of ‘modern’ philosophy, norms, and beliefs. This is a commentary based in reality, especially considering that when Achebe wrote “Dead Man’s Path”, he had been living in Nigeria as an undergraduate student. Perhaps Achebe simply chose to exaggerate the character of a real person who he knew, and create the character of Michael Obi. Regardless, Achebe clearly uses Obi to illustrate his belief that ancient tradition carries more power than fragile, modern ideals, and adjusts his fate accordingly. The demise of Obi’s grand plan may stand as a warning from the writer to the reader, silently urging them to avoid disconnecting with their heritage. It may additionally be a commentary on the Westernization of foreign nations, which was …show more content…
He masterfully crafted a vain, misguided character, Michael Obi, whose arrogance and disregard for beliefs and traditions not corresponding with his own permeated his life. He then placed this character, a foreign presence in a place of great ancestral significance, at odds with those whose history had been defined by their beliefs. In a twist of irony, the beliefs which Michael had held in such low esteem became his downfall, when Michael’s inadvertently caused a frenzy among the villagers, and caused them to cause severe damage to the school, just in time for a government school inspector to arrive. This irony appears to be used to illustrate the futility of waging ideological war on those whose ideals are more firmly grounded than one’s own, and further conveys the theme to the reader. It is a clear demonstration of the pointlessness of attempting to flee one’s own heritage and traditions, and perhaps serves as yet another warning to the reader. Achebe may be attempting to warn those who have abandoned their cultural identity of the futility of their actions, using Michael Obi’s outrageous comeuppance as an extreme example of the repercussions of hiding from something that is truly a part of each of us. He appears to be elegantly informing the reader that irrespective of our own decisions, our heritage truly and always exists within us, and is impossible to flee from or