Licen, Christian Ray C.
BA English Major in Literature
III-V
Criticism of Fiction: Post-Structural Analysis
Selection: Chinua Achebe’s Dead Men’s Path
Post-Structural Analysis:
Chinua Achebe’s Dead Men’s Path
This story by Chinua Achebe is a conflict between individual aspirations and communal rites. Central to the story is the issue of Obi who is appointed as the new headmaster of Ndume Central School wherein he wishes to renovate the school by way of pegging out its parameters. This attempt of his has brought about a communal turmoil among the local settlers and native villagers because it would only mean a closure of their road toward the shrine where most of their rituals take place. Obi, though filled with energy and potential to establish good rapport with the people, is scandalized by an old woman’s trespassing of their school. That prompts him to fence around whole the school vicinity, thus prohibiting the native pilgrims from going in and out of the road to the shrine. What moved me to catharsis was the point when the Ani or village priest said to Obi, “this path was here before you were born and before your father was born. The whole life of this village depends on it. Our dead relatives depart by it and our ancestors visit us by it. But most important, it is the path of children in coming to be born…” But Obi counteracted by saying, “Dead Men do not require footpaths”. Obi’s adamant conviction of seriously closing the thoroughfare is but a domineering act. This, I reckon, connotes the idea of the Colonialism vs. the Colonized. Obi, whose influence permeates his power to rule, elicits a negative effect on the people. Yes, he may be doing the right thing to close the road but he must have first considered the majority of the villager’s sentiments and grievances who are in any way, their clientele and recipients. His superimposition had mired him in misery for he was just surprised to witness a complete destruction of his school the days following after the foreboding. The ruins of which earmark a people triumph though they lost a young woman due to the ancestor’s abhorrence of the road’s closure. We may find here some elements of paganism or superstition. But in local color stories like this, it would earn a good reputation and credit.
Achebe explores themes of cultural clash with regards to knowledge, experience and attitudes toward life. He may want to obtain a veritable account upon the ideology that nothing ever surpasses the wisdom of the old. And that, no one knows better than the persons living in that village. Obi and his wife’s character depict the attitudes of the colonizers whose purposes do not necessarily cater to the needs of the residents. In such case then, we realize how they were filled with remorse upon the aftermath when the Supervisor came to inspect the school and is disconcerted to witness a tribal-war situation which developed between the school and the village. Thus, he calls Obi, a misguided zealot. More importantly, what we generally aim to construe is Achebe’s distinctive deconstruction of thought. We see the villagers as the post-structuralists who defy the conventions and impositions set by Obi, the structuralist. In any specimen of truth, the villager’s symbolize an empowered nation whose identity, color and race is recognized and respected. The author’s intent is to evoke a textual subconscious within the parameters of its linguistic discontinuity. Furthermore, the pluralities of the voices that are identifiable in the story showcase a conflict that shift not just from Obi vs. the villagers, but also to that of the issue of the story vs. the issue of the community. The silence of the villagers to counteract Obi’s intentions and superimpositions had in turn put them on the pedestal when the ancestors had avenged for them.
As in any colonial country, people experience not just political struggle but an inhibition of their rights and privileges. Certainly, no colonizer would ever succumb to the needs of the people had their political ambitions overpowered their moral ascendancy. In the case of the Obi and the villagers, the prognosis of the village priest had manifested, thus the line, let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch is post-structural and post-colonial in its contextual sense.
