Reflection of Dead Men's Path

Dead Men’s Path Essay New ideas are the lifeblood of human cultural and academic evolution. It is the human’s ability to reflect and answer questions of the betterment of daily life that is responsible for the great achievements of mankind. Our ability to create new ways of doing everyday tasks lead to inventions like the car, to make transportation more efficient, or regular everyday machinery that makes difficult chores safer and easier. Dreams come true with new ideas as well. History as shown since written account of people have been recorded that man has always dreamed of being able to be like birds and fly. Now flight is a normal thing for humans because of airplanes. At what point though do we draw a line with change and contemporary improvements and remember tradition? If we constantly look forward can we truly learn from our past mistakes? Tradition teaches us to remember what works and to remember what is important. When tradition is lost self-identity is also lost. Respect for certain virtues and ideals can be found in tradition. So what happens when we lose sight of that? This theme of modernizing and fighting tradition is seen in Chinua Achebe’s short story Dead Men’s Path. Micheal Obi was a man with a vision of the future. He was highly intelligent and respectable man. He was successful and had a bunch enthusiasm for his job. However, for all his good traits he had one major flaw, his excess of arrogance. He wanted to make Ndume Central School more progressive. His passion for making everything around him modern caused him to resent anything old. Instead of looking at his elders as good resources to learn from, he called them narrow-minded and less educated. This contamination of arrogance got pasted on to his wife. She wanted to make the school beautiful by adding gardens around the school, but her good intentions were also shaded by bad character. She wanted to be viewed as the queen of the school, and wanted to be the envy of all the other