Dead men's path essay

When there is peace between two different people and cultures it is almost always for the better. The headmaster and the priest of the village for some reason do not get along. “Dead men’s path” by Chinua Achebe shows the struggles of life. It shows that when people don’t get along nothing good can come from it. When people fight and disagree the world shakes; but when people get along it is calm and still. Would you rather shake than be still? Peace in the world is better than war.

Being a man of control, headmaster Obi looks at the path as a thing of destruction. The path in a sense is completely harmless. It represents the dead ancestors coming through the path to visit with family. If this gate way is closed so is the communication. The path symbolizes the communication between the priest and the headmaster. Headmaster, thinking of himself closes the gate way to the village to save his school. He thinks nothing of how the villagers feel, but somehow feels remorse and guilt for what he has done. All he wanted to do was make sure that his school passed the inspection. He tries to regain the peace that he and the priest had once had. By then it was broken and nothing could fix it. If the headmaster would have let things be, the peace would have remained. When something is broken it is then more than one piece. Once it is broken it is usually hard to fix; just like the path in the story. If the headmaster was more considerate of his surroundings the inspection would have done well and no harm would have been caused. Everything could have been fine if the path was never bothered and just left alone.

The path represents death and new beginnings. Without death there could be no new. With every bad thing comes a good. The path is the only way for the ancestors to cross between the village and for newborns to arrive. It is the only way that death can escape, or it will be trapped. As the priest states on page 477 in the fiction book “This path was here before you were born and before your father was born. The whole life of the village depends on it. Our dead relatives depart by it and our ancestors visit by it. But most important, it is the path of children coming in to be born…”. This path was the life of the village and when it was gone so was the village. But because the headmaster refused to listen to the priest, he suffered the consequences as well. His inspection was ruined by the very hate that he shunned against the village. When the school was perfect, there was no hate; only love to fulfill the school of the dreams it could become in the future. These dreams and hopes were then crushed by the path that was now closed off. Everything could have been prevented if one small thing was done differently; the path had remained open.

This story was inspired by the African culture. Everyone perceives a story differently according to what they have learned in the past. If the priest and the headmaster grasped the path in the same way there would have never been a conflict. “A dead men’s path” shows that even though people do not get along we need to learn how to. Many people walk away from situations without trying to compromise. This story teaches us that we need to learn this skill to become successful in life. If you can not cooperate with other people life will be hard for you.