Dead Men’s Path

Achebe’s “Dead Men’s Path” is an important early work by the author that introduces themes that Achebe explored throughout his fictional and critical writings. primarily the culture clash between Tradition Versus Modernity and the effects of colonization on the local population. In it, he challenges the weakness of many colonial stories, even the best-intentioned ones, which carry traces of the “civilizing mission” and can only ever view African life from an outsider’s perspective. This results in what Achebe described as a superficial rendition, such as the one produced by Joyce Cary in Mister Johnson (1939). In place of these superficial narratives, Achebe writes as an insider with a deep understanding and appreciation of Indigenous African cultures and traditions. He also tells a story with a more universal framing of a tragic hero who is undone by his hubris, excessive pride, and zeal. The tragedy of the story is simultaneously dismantled by its irony, which undoes Obi’s duty as headmaster to improve the local mission school as well as undermining the superiority and infallibility of the European “colonizing mission.” With this, Obi’s narrative arc reinforces The Danger of Hubris and the Importance of Tolerance.

Although Achebe writes in English and has a global audience, his intended readers are his fellow Nigerians. He explains his decision to write in English, which he identifies as a “national” language accessible to all Nigerians, compared to “ethnic” languages that have smaller, regional reaches. Achebe wrote that the “weight of [his] African experience […] it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings” (“The African Writer and the English Language”). There are several examples of Achebe’s “new” English in this story. The first is a somewhat inverted example, in which he shows how ludicrous Obi’s wife Nancy sounds when she mindlessly parrots a British phrase she read in a woman’s magazine. Wanting to be admired as the “queen of the school” is another way in which her desire to enact a version of colonial rule can be seen.

Achebe’s work differs from both colonial writings that romanticize the Europeans as the “white savior” who comes to rescue the Indigenous person from their “savagery” and “ignorance” and other postcolonial narratives that take a clear stance of nationalist resistance to colonial rule. Rather, Achebe’s story exposes the dangers of unquestioningly adopting the Western colonial project and the inherent racism and bigotry that underlies it. Two of the belief systems that fed into Westernization and the “civilizing mission” were white supremacy and Christian predeterminism, or the idea that God willed white Europeans to be the rulers of the world). This “civilizing mission” also blended Enlightenment-era imperialist logic with 19th and 20th-century pseudoscientific and racist ideas like phrenology and eugenics to justify colonization and oppression. Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism explains how scientists, artists, and scholars were deployed by European governments to define and depict non-Westerners in opposition to Europeans and always make them inferior in that binary opposition.

Readers see this in the story when Michael Obi, whose English first name identifies him as a Christian convert, shows no respect for the village priest or his explanation for why access to the path is religiously imperative for the local community. While Obi considers his Christian beliefs religious, he asserts that the villagers have only superstitions and fantasies. He even tells the priest that it is “our duty to teach your children to laugh at such ideas” (73). This statement sets up a binary in its use of pronouns: “our” duty versus “your” children. Obi identifies here entirely with the European colonizer as represented by the mission school rather than the priest as a fellow colonized African. While colonizers often use flowery language to describe their mission, colonization is not possible without violence and oppression. This is represented in Achebe’s imagery; Obi and his wife find that their flower gardens do not mold the local people’s behavior, so they erect a brutal, barbed wire fence to maintain control.

The priest’s advice, which comes in the form of an African “new English” proverb (“let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch” (74)) is lost on Obi. This proverb is meant to remind Obi that it’s important to tolerate and respect different belief systems, whether they be his own acquired from the Christian colonizer or the local religion that venerates Ani and the ancestors. The phrase references two powerful birds of prey, indicating that the two belief systems are equally powerful and important and should respect each other’s territories. Obi is unable to hear or heed the priest’s warnings, which foreshadow the dangers that lie ahead with Obi’s rigid imposition of modernity and dismissal of tradition.

Obi is glib in his comments about the ancestors, saying that “[D]ead men do not require footpaths” (73) and “I don’t suppose the ancestors will find the little detour too burdensome” (74). Obi learns that dead men do require footpaths, as do the unborn as a woman dies in childbirth after he blocks the path. This consequence alludes to another mechanism of colonialism: eugenics and population control. While Obi can impose physical barriers on the people, he cannot quash their religious beliefs, and the people sacrifice the compound to appease their ancestors’ anger. If Obi had not internalized the belief system in which his “modern” beliefs are inherently superior to the villagers’, he might have treated the priest and the local beliefs with the respect that they deserved. Achebe insists throughout his writing on the equal value of local culture and tradition but does not do so in a way that overly romanticizes it.

Another postcolonial critic, Frantz Fanon, took a different approach a decade later in his book-length study of the effects of colonialism, The Wretched of the Earth (1961). Fanon argued that part of the anti-colonial struggle involves forging a new national culture rather than accepting that of the colonizer, as Obi does, or holding on to the pre-colonial period, as the priest seems to do. While Fanon argues for the creation of a new national culture, Achebe argues for the preservation of national and cultural identity while acknowledging the changes that Westernization and modernization have brought.

Obi, however, is unable to strike this balance, working instead to eradicate what he sees as “backward” and “laughable.” He is unable to see his own reflection in the villagers, preferring to identify with “modern” and European society. He does not realize that his white supervisor views him as little more than a tool with which to conduct the colonizing project. This can be seen by the “nasty” report, which rightfully blames Obi for the destruction at the compound and ironically describes Obi’s zeal, which had previously been lauded, as misguided. Obi simplistically and rigidly followed the school’s “civilizing mission,” having embraced “modernization” without questioning its underlying Orientalist baggage. His hubris or excessive pride in himself and his mission rendered him unable to heed the teacher’s warning or the priest’s compromise. He is a tragic figure, brought down by his zeal and pride, the very things that had launched his previously stellar career. This underlines the point that Obi (and by extension all Africans) will never be subjects in the imperial project; they will always be objectified and oppressed by white supremacist forces.