"Dead Men's Path" by Chinua Achebe

The story takes place in 1949 in Ndume, which is a rural village in Southeast Nigeria. It describes the lives of a young marriage, with the story revolving around the husband, Michael Obi, as the protagonist of the story. Michael is modern-thinking educator from Nigeria who was given the task to reform the Ndume Central School. He is chosen for this task because of his headstrong attitude and his ways into pushing modern methods with no regard to cultural tradition. These traits toppled with his unwavering pride makes him the perfect target for life’s fortune wheel to take him off his high horse. After they enforce their modern ways into the school and make the surroundings a little more to their liking they discover that the residents of a nearby village uses a footpath that crosses the campus of the school.

Thinking that the Education Officer would give him a bad review after seeing the footpath he decides to close it up, as to not let any more people walk through it. Three days after Michael closed the footpath in his self-righteous way to be “perfect”, a village priest visits him and explains the importance of the footpath. Michael is unmoved by the words of the priest and insists that the path remain closed, because the reason he was assigned as Headmaster of the school was to destroy any ancestral beliefs that dominated the land. Two days after Michael met with the village priest, a resident of the nearby village dies of childbirth and the villagers take it up to them to have revenge on the Headmaster, so they destroy the gardens and even tear down one of the schools buildings. When Michael arrives to the school he is devastated to see what the villagers did to the school and the Education Officer gives Michael a “nasty report” about how Michael could not eradicate the ancestral beliefs of the school and the village.

Michael is in a way the personification of the verse in the bible in Provebs 16:18 “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” He is a man that does not listen to reason and only goes with his instinct, his pride and therefor what makes his life better, not taking into consideration the feelings or cultural beliefs that other people might have. The overall theme of the story is cultural respect and how ignorance can lead to the downfall of even the mightiest of men.