Dead Men's Path by Chinua Achebe

Pay attention, now!

There is power in simplicity when it comes to short-stories but that doesn't mean they can't also be impactful. In only a few pages, Chinua Achebe manages to tackle some big themes in Dead Men’s Path: colonization, tradition vs. progress, generational clashes, African spiritual belief and resistance to imposed authority. What really struck me is how gently Achebe sets all of this up to come crashing down during the final scene. The foreshadowing in the opening paragraphs is subtle but effective with a sense early on that this neat, orderly vision of modernity is headed for trouble.

Set in pre-independence Nigeria, the story follows Michael Obi, a young and ambitious headmaster newly appointed to a school built by the colonial authorities. He takes enormous pride in the position and is eager to prove himself worthy of the white administration’s praise. To Obi, progress means clean grounds, strict rules, and total conformity to Western ideas of order and education. Tradition, on the other hand, strikes him as backward, irrational, and in need of being erased.

The central conflict arises when Obi discovers that the school sits directly on a footpath the villagers have used for generations. It is a a sacred path connecting the living to their ancestors and the unborn. To the local priest and the community, this path is spiritually essential. To Obi, it’s nothing more than an eyesore and an obstacle to modern discipline. What makes the conflict so powerful is how easily it could have been avoided. The priest is calm, reasonable, and open to compromise, but Obi’s rigid adherence to colonial ideals leaves no room for understanding or respect.

Achebe makes it clear that this isn’t just a personal disagreement. This conflict is a microcosm of colonialism itself. Obi, though African, has fully internalized the values of the colonial system and ends up enforcing them more harshly than the colonizers might have. In trying to sever the past in the name of progress, he creates chaos rather than order. By the end, the story shows how dangerous it is to dismiss tradition as mere superstition and how modernity, when imposed without empathy, can become just another form of oppression. It’s a simple story on the surface, but the roots of its conflict run deep, making Dead Men’s Path a sharp and unsettling reflection on what gets lost when progress refuses to listen.

You can read this story HERE.