Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Born November 16th 1930
Died March 21st 2013
Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic.
First novel : Things Fall Apart (1958)
Known as the "Father of African Literature"
Raised in the Igbo town of Ogidi (Southeastern Nigeria).
Father was an early convert to Christianity and both parents respected their traditional culture while being practicing Protestant Christians.
Excelled at academics- attended St. Phillips' Central School.
Scholarship to Nigeria's first university - 1948.
Studied medicine, but changed to English Literature.
Worked as a teacher in Oba.
Took a job with the Nigerian Broadcasting Service.
Became internationally recognized after writing his first novel in the 1950s.
Made the controversial decision to write in English.
Became politically involved in the Nigerian Civil War.
Took a professorship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the 1970s.
Gave a controversial lecture in which he calls Joseph Conrad a "bloody racist".
1990, automobile accident left him partially disabled.
Until his death in 2013, he taught at Bard College and Brown University.
Michael Obi is appointed the new headmaster of Ndume school and is excited to achieve his goals of implementing a high standard of teaching and making the campus a place of beauty. The new gardens have a footpath running through them, used by the villagers to reach their sacred burial grounds. When he refuses to let the villagers use the path, they sacrifice the gardens and the school building to correct the wrong he has caused.
Set in 1949, during Great Britain's rule of Nigeria
Conflicting culture of the "newer" British ways and "old" African customs
Michael reflects British modernization,
the priest reflects the African customs
Michael is meant to progress the school into the modern ages with his innovative ways. Ndume is said to be an "unprogressive" institution, reflecting the opinion of the British colonizers when considering the African tribal ways.
The Ndume school is an example of how educational institutions were used as a tool to establish control by the colonizers. They would begin teaching the young villagers there ways to allow for a more "stealthy" invasion and transition.
Michael Obi thinks that the villagers are backwards and says that "the whole purpose of [this] school... is to eradicate just such beliefs as that... Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas" (12). He implies that his goal is to eliminate the cultural identity of the villagers. This was one of the strategies imposed by the British when colonizing, to eliminate as much cultural identity as they could to assimilate the natives to their own culture.
1) Why is Nancy's presence significant to the story?
2) Considering the actions of each man, is Obi or the priest more tolerant of other's beliefs?
3) Analyze Obi's motivations in valuing the flower beds and hedges more than the villager's beliefs. How is this social commentary?
4) What does the path mean to the villagers?
5) What is the Ani community destroying the flowerbeds, hedges, and school building symbolic of? Are the members of the community justified in their destruction?
6) Dramatic Irony is used by Achebe, building up the new schoolmaster in the beginning only to lead him down a darker path. What could this dramatic irony be reflective of?
7) Reading this story, how do you think that Achebe feels about the clash of cultures in the part of Africa in which he grew up? About the colonization of Nigeria by the British?
8) Analyze the report by the white Supervisor. What do the claims symbolize?
9) Analyze the priests statement that "What I always say is: let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch" (12).
Achebe, Chinua. “Dead Men's Path.” Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia and R. S. Gwynn, Pearson Longman, 2006, pp. 9–13.
Brittanica, Editors. “Chinua Achebe.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 12 Nov. 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Chinua-Achebe.
“Chinua Achebe.” Edited by Biography.com Editors, Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 17 June 2020, www.biography.com/writer/chinua-achebe.
Kandell, Jonathan. “Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82.” The New York Times, 22 Mar. 2013.