Conflict

An important part of the short story “Dead Man’s Path” by Chinua Achebe focuses on the external conflict between Michael Obi and the village priest.

The conflict starts when Obi notices the villagers are crossing his wife’s carefully-arranged garden to get to the village graveyard. When told about the existence of the footpath and how the villagers have always used it, Obi is annoyed that the school has accepted this habit so far, instead of no longer allowing access to the villagers. From the start, Obi refuses to see the villagers’ side and does not want to accept the existence of the footpath, since it does not fit with his image of a modern school:

‘It amazes me,’ said Obi to one of his teachers who had been three years in the school, ‘that you people allowed ...