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Essay Draft Three
Selina Ge
May 22,2007
Draft Three Culture Should Not Be Invaded
From the context of the story, we know that the British gained control of Nigeria at the turn of the twentieth century. Viewing Igbo culture as inferior and barbaric, the British took it as their mission that to introduce the Western’s culture, including Christianity and modern education. All of these had weakened Nigeria’s tribal affiliations. The author of “Dead Men’s Path”, Chinua Achebe, was born in Nigeria in the year of 1930. At that time, the colonial people were clinging to the traditional beliefs, which had existed for thousands of years and were handed down by generations. But the ambitious British tried to replace them with their modern industrial culture, which made colonial people quite indignant, so they defended their culture with every effort. (52).
In the story of Dead Men’s Path, Michael Obi, a young and energetic man, symbolized the power of Christianity. 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.(52) , so the Mission chose him to manage the school in order to let him introduce the Western education and culture. The Dead Men’s Path, which crossed the school compound, symbolized the traditional tribal belief. For the villagers, it was the path that connected life and death. Both of the new life’s birth and the olds’ leave needed to go through this path, so the Dead Men’s Path was the most important symbol and the core thing of their belief system. The conflict between Obi and the villagers about the dead men’s path actually was the conflict between two different kinds of cultural. The result that Obi failed implied that culture should not be invaded. It meant that every nation or region had its own culture system, which reflected their view of the world, including their beliefs about such things as love and death. Most of the culture systems had existed for a long time and the systems’ traditional practices were held by the local people. Nations should not try to impose their own culture on other nations’ people or replace another nation’s culture.
Obi was confident, radical and ambitious. He devoted all of his energy to the school because he thought the purpose of the school is “to eradicate just such beliefs as that.”(54), so he was “civilizing people”, or “saving people from darkness”.
These characteristics of Obi could be associated with that time’s British. It meant that the twentieth-century British was just full of ambition and looked for any opportunity to introduce its culture. The Mission said that they were weakening people in order to save them from darkness when the fact was that the Mission considered itself superior than any other belief and wanted to gain the control of culture all over the world. It wanted to replace all the other culture by every means, including violence. Culture should not be invaded, even in the name of civilization, as long as the culture’s introduction was against the local people’s will.
Culture should not be invaded because that It is considered natural that everyone has the right to choose their own belief. People want to be free in heart. If there is someone who wants to impose his belief on us, we will quarrel with him and insists on our practices. It is the same that when a nation wants to impose its culture system on another, it will have to face up to all kinds of fight from the citizens. There were a lot of such events in history. For example, in the 1940s, Japan held a aggressive war to China and took some provinces as its colonies. There Japan wanted to impose its culture on colonial people. The Japanese troops occupied local schools and forbad the colonial people to study their culture. The colonial people had to speak the language of Japanese and study Japan’s belief system and they would be killed if they refused to do this. But the colonial people were not threatened. They struggled against it with their bodies and blood to defend their culture. At last, they succeeded and Japan was expelled. The result also implied that anybody who want to impose certain kind of culture on others would fail at last.
Even the priest had made Obi aware of the importance of the path, he insisted on closing it. If at that time he was willing to respect the colonial traditional culture and reopen the path, maybe there would not be the violent event. But he was not. The villagers would not give up their struggles and they ruined the compound at last. Culture should not be invaded. Once a region’s culture was invaded, local people would defend it with all their strength and would not give in no matter how strong the opponent’s power was.
From the last paragraph of the story, we knew that the white Supervisor condemned the young headmaster. I think Obi’s failure implies that every kind of culture in the world should be respected. People are free to choose their beliefs.
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(20.9.11 07:48)
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