Ara M – Year 9 Student
Editor’s Note: Year 9 Student Ara M interrogates Chinua Achebe’s ‘Dead Men’s Path’ by analysing key word choices that highlight themes of colonialism, racism and power. A short, sharp and clever essay. EB
While Chinua Achebe shows evidence of the Native Culture dying, that is just on the surface level. Instead, Achebe is trying to show to the reader that the deep-rooted racist appropriation that is proven by the white missionaries’ control of the culture is actually slowly killing the older culture, rather than that it dying in a natural and more predictable way.
An example of this is the phrase that Achebe uses to begin the explanation of how Michael Obi was employed; ‘It has always been an unprogressive school, so the mission authorities decided to send a young and energetic man to run it.’ We can unpack a lot of things from this sentence. Firstly, the adjective ‘unprogressive’ in this sentence has a double connotation: that of it being not up with the times, and also not being with the times in the eyes of the missionaries who, as we have shown already, have a skewed view of what is modern and up to their standard. So, this ultimately shows that the white missionaries already have created an opinion on a subject with which everyone has to agree.
Another thing that is shown in this sentence is the use of the adjectives to describe Michael Obi; specifically the words ‘young’ and ‘energetic’. The reason it is significant is because those two words are in a sort of juxtaposition with the world ‘always’. ‘Always’ signifies that it is something that has been constant and thus deemed as old, and the fact that the white missionaries decided to introduce something newer and more modern, clearly reveals that they are trying to change the old ways of doing things, which historically have been the main goal of colonisers. Thus, we have managed to derive from this one sentence that the white missionaries are attempting to kill the old ways of doing things and replacing them with a representative of their own ideas, so that they may make it easier for them to control.
‘What will the government education officer think when he comes to see the school next week? For all I know the villagers may decide to use the school room for a pagan ritual!’
Lastly, the final point I would like to focus on is the clear indifference of Michael Obi to the old culture, and his lack of tolerance or respect for a practice he does not understand. This is shown in the phrase: ‘What will the government education officer think when he comes to see the school next week? For all I know the villagers may decide to use the school room for a pagan ritual!’ The phrase ‘pagan ritual’ suggests that Michael Obi clearly does not think highly of this culture, and is disrespecting it by referring to it as primitive, even though it is stated that he doesn’t understand it and wants to please the white missionary. This shows that Michael Obi is disrespectful and intolerant and will bend over backwards for the white missionaries at the expense of his people.
In conclusion, we have established that the white missionaries are sending in brainwashed, younger people to exterminate the old culture so that they can enforce and convert the people into their way of thinking. But an interesting thing to finally look at is that rather than sending in their own white missionaries to take up positions of power, they are sending in Black people and choose to pull the puppet strings from behind. I think they do this so people will passively begin to believe what they are saying because it isn’t an unfamiliar race or colour who is killing them. Instead, is it their own people. Therefore, the underlying message of this story along with not to stamp out other cultures is that it’s not always the invaders spreading the messages, sometimes it can be the invaded.
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