Forward Across Graves. Chinua Achebe's “Dead Men's Path” as an Example for a Cultural Clash E-Book

Juliane Richter

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2011 im Fachbereich Literaturwissenschaft - Afrika, Note: 2,3, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: In the following paper the author wants to explain the main conflict shown in the short story "Dead Men's Path" by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, bring it into context to his biograph and constantly recurring mistakes mankind makes on the other hand. In western society every woman and every man is taught that it is of utmost importance to reach one´s goals and become successful is one of the main fields of life. As a result, many young people fight for their dreams neither looking left or right. Throughout history, progress and innovation were two of the most important catchphrases and through all times in history the “more educated and more modern” people thought it was the most important thing to bring their new knowledge, lifestyle and ideas to the more backward ones since that would make their life so much better. But just these notions are wrong. Contact with other cultures and bringing new ideas doesn´t change minds! And exactly this is the main theme in the short story “Dead men´s path” by Chinua Achebe which was published in 1953. This issue, Achebe points out, has its roots in his own biography and is a recurrent theme of many of his novels and poems.

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Contents

Introduction

2. Coherence between the biography of the Author Chinua Achebe and the issue of a cultural clash

2.1 Biography

2.2 Cultural clash

3. Summary of the short story

3.1 Main content

3.2 Analysis of setting, time and voice

3.3 Characterization of the main characters

4. Main conflict of the text

4.1 Main problem

4.2 Different points of view shown in the text and stylistic devices used by the author to make clear his preferences regarding point of view

5. Conclusion- Message of the author?

Bibliography

Introduction

“People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. It´s not viewed as a serious continent. It´s a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people don´t do what common sense demands.”[1]

In western society every woman and every man is taught that it is of utmost importance toreach one´s goals and become successful is one of the main fields of life. As a result, many young people fight for their dreams neither looking left or right. Throughout history, progress and innovation were two of the most important catchphrases and through all times in history the “more educated and more modern” people thought it was the most important thing to bring their new knowledge, lifestyle and ideas to the more backward ones since that would make their life so much better. But just these notions are wrong. Contact with other cultures and bringing new ideas doesn´t change minds! And exactly this is the main theme in the short story “Dead men´s path” by Chinua Achebe which was published in 1953. This issue, Achebe points out, has its roots in his own biography and is a recurrent theme of many of his novels and poems.

In the following paper I want to explain the main conflict shown in the short story and bring it into context to Achebe´s biography on the one hand and constantly recurring mistakes mankind makes on the other hand. To make it a clear and easily understandable piece of work I will start with the coherence between biography and the cultural clash, follow up with a summary and analysis of the short story and then turn to describing the conflict and its deeper meaning.