Dead’s man path essay

Obi was wrong in his thinking and in his methods, believing that he can Just cut the people off from what in our time would be considered a funeral. When it comes to the destruction and rejection of something that was and is important to people such as traditions no matter how old the customs may be, nobody has the right to negate a person’s background and nobody has the ability to remove a person’s belief and substitute it with their own. An unfamiliar cultures belief may seem fanciful but to those who believe it, it is as much vital part of their lives as technology is in ours. The heart of a person’s belief is in having faith although what you believe can never be proven.

What happens in death is a perfect example of this. Nobody alive can know what happens after death so we are left with our imaginations to hope that our loved ones are in a better place rather than in the ground or left as ashes. People need that faith to carry on because at times the thought of never again seeing those people can be unbearable. Our ancestor’s traditions and customs are important because the only knowledge we eve of things we have no proof on is in the things passed down for generations.

Just as the story explained, the villagers were so strong in their beliefs of the path that when it became blocked they attacked the school and everything that was blocking the sacred path: “ The beautiful hedges were torn up not Just near the path but right around the school…

Flowers trampled…

One of the school buildings torn down… ” The importance of a person’s culture is more than Just the faith of a single person, it oneness a group of people who believe alike and allows them to work together with the same end results. As stated in Achebe’s Dead Men’s Path, contemporary community shouldn’t do as Obi and try to eradicate the core of a people’s beliefs which, with his mocking reply to the priest is Just what he tried to do. ” .

.. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas. ” It is important to remember and to honor traditions. Many people fight to keep their traditions alive, whether it’s an old woman making her 80th annual pilgrimage to a Mexican cemetery to light a candle at.