The Conflict Between Modern and Traditional in Dead Men's Path

In the short story: Dead Man’s Path, Michael Obi emerges as headmaster of a school in Ndume. Michael Obi was a 26 years-old well-educated man. Obi becomes irritated when he sees a lady part through the flowers outside of the school. As a result, Obi gets the path encircled with barbed wire, and the villagers make another path around it destroying the garden outside of the school, eventually, Obi gets fired.

The principle conflict encompasses a town trail that movements through the school compound interfacing the townspeople's hallowed place to their cemetery.

Obi, a dynamic superintendent, chooses to hinder the way since he doesn't need the villagers meandering on school grounds during an evaluation. After he shuts the way, the town minister, Ani, visits Obi and informs him that the strolling way is a necessary piece of their life. Ani says that hereditary spirits and future youngsters travel to and from between the way. Obi, who doesn't have confidence in such spirits, doesn't pay attention to the man and won't open the way.

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The following day a lady bites the dust during labor, and the villagers look for revenge by tearing down one of the school's structures. Unfortunately, the observer composes a scorching survey and criticizes Obi for impelling clash between the locals and the school.

To answer the question “How does the setting in Dead Man’s Path create conflict between Obi and the villagers?” The familial trail (as a setting) makes strife among Obi and the locals. The more hardened Igbo age values conventional mores, while the more up to date age sees these customs as obsolete and superfluous.

In the story, the cleric contends for convention, however Obi adamantly opposes the senior. Obi speaks to the more youthful age of Igbos who have been instructed in preacher schools. Obi stated, 'The whole purpose of our school,' he said finally, 'is to eradicate just such beliefs as that. Dead men do not require footpaths.

The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas' (12). Michael, felt as if the path wasn’t a good look for the school, especially because the supervisor was coming to review the school. “He had many wonderful ideas, and this was an opportunity to put them into practice. He had had sound secondary school education which designated him a 'pivotal teacher' in the official records and set him apart from the other headmasters in the mission field. He was outspoken in his condemnation of the narrow views of these older and often less educated ones”(11). This supports that Michael had high hopes for this school, as he was given such a great opportunity to upgrade the school.