Essay Draft Two

Diamond Tang
May 15, 2007
Draft Two
 
    Success Needs More Than Outstanding Abilities
 
Men are born for accomplishments. “A man can be destroyed, but he can never be defeated”, said Hemingway. So without doubt everyone has his ambition, no matter big or small. With the goal in our mind, we set out our journey to be somebody. To increase our competitiveness, we have more or less developed some qualities, such as doggedness, originality etc. Most people take it for granted that using these qualities can surely help them realize their dreams. But they may be wrong, or at least, their notion of how to be successful is not adequate. Chinua Achebe somehow supplements their views in “Dead Men’s Path”.
 
In this story, Michael Obi, a new headmaster of a Nigeria School, who is energetic in putting his many wonderful ideas into practice, found his school was backward in many aspects. For example, there is a dead men’s path. In Obi’s eyes, this superstitious thing is intolerable since it completely goes against his modern teaching system. He has to eradicate all similar things. After a confrontation with a senior priest on whether the path be closed or not, Obi managed to realize his reform but his opponent destroyed much of the school in retaliation, which was seen as the result of his neglect by the white supervisor. Obi’ failure is inexplicable. From my perspective, if he really wants to use his brilliance and innovativeness to be a success, he should have curbed his individual ambition so that it didn't go against social customs.
 
Obi is utterly work-oriented and pays almost no attention to family life, which obviously doesn’t obey our usual emphasis on building a happy, cozy and harmonious family. I can’t help feeling pity for his wife, since she has almost become an accessory of her egocentric husband over the years of their marriage. She had become “completely infected by” her husband’s passion for “modern school. She has no individual emotion, since Obi’s happiness is also her happiness; Obi’s misfortune makes her downcast as well. What is most impressive and ironic is that she “wavered between hope and fear” just because she remembered that all the school faculties are single so she can’t be “the queen of the school”! If Obi had not been treating his wife just as something necessary and decorative, should his wife wastes her energy and time on such trifle things? His wife can just share Obi’s enthusiasm, which explicitly shows Obi’s lack of family values.
 
What also illustrates Obi’s slack family idea is his awkward logic: the fact that all his colleagues are “young and unmarried” is “a good thing” because “they will give all their time and energy to the school”. Are work and family two opposing things? According to common social customs, only by boasting a stable family as a strong support can one really exhibit talents in work. From this point, we can conclude that Obi is too enterprising and eager to be somebody that he ignores social customs such as family life. Such ignorance turned out to be the source of his waterloo as revealed in the later part of the story.
 
If Obi had only been a typical workaholic, he wouldn’t necessarily have his wretched ending. In fact, he made other mistakes in dealing with various kinds of people. “He was outspoken in his condemnation of the narrow views of these older and often less-educated ones.” Obi just had some “sound secondary school education.” Is he eligible enough to show his “denigration of these old and superannuated people” and think they would be better employed as “traders in the Onitsha market” than “in the teaching field”? It was just because Obi had such narrow views towards other people that he thought their views were narrow! Men are socially born, raised and developed.
Knowing how to appreciate other people and learn from them is undoubtedly a usual social customs. So Obi’ such attitude towards people around him clearly accounts for his failure.
 
Obi’s words also vividly depict his unsophisticacy in dealing with people. When one of the teachers told him that the path appeared to be very important to the villagers and implied its deep religious meaning, Obi didn’t catch the hint at all. “When you are in Rome, do things as Romes do”. However, Obi knew nothing but his school. “And what has that got to do with the school?" When I first read this, I felt dumbfounded. Even if he didn’t know the path’s special implication, he should have changed his idea and showed respect to the local people’ own choice of religion. Unfortunately, Obi didn’t notice the teacher’s accommodating tone “apologetically” or body language “with a shrug of the shoulders”, he just arbitrarily order that “it will not be used now”.
We can already find that Obi is very lacked in social experience and social techniques from this single sentence. It is too curt and impolite! How can Obi avert his doom if he didn’t notice there are tons of hidden yet strong social principles that we must abide by?
 
Of course, Obi’s biggest blunder that leads to his tragedy lies in the field of religion. Once again, it was still caused by his ignorance of the social customs. The whole story reached its climax with the direct confrontation between Obi and the village priest . After the senior priest reiterated the religious importance of the path “Our dead relatives depart by it and our ancestors visit us by it. But most important, it is the path of children coming in to be born…” Obi didn’t bother to let the old man to complete his talk! Instead, he showed “a satisfied smile” on his face. All these means that throughout the talking, Obi always held a superior’s position, he never stopped using a patronizing tone. Sarcastically, it gave me the feeling that Obi was the real chief of the village, while the senior priest was only a begging intruder. Obi frequently applied this kind of utterly wrong attitude towards the sensitive topic of religion. He said his “modern school” aimed at “eradicating such beliefs as that.” The thought is totally subverting since he dared to undermine the fundamental base of the local people! And he didn’t stop by that: “The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas.” Even after hearing these presumptuous and arbitrary words, the senior priest still didn’t give up the last hope, and he used a rather simple yet most compromising sentence, much against to his will: “What you say may be true,” and he gave a big offer: “If you reopen the path we shall have nothing to quarrel about.” Nevertheless, Obi didn’t know the gravity of the religious disaster. In his eye, compared to his school, which is his whole life, the local people’s religion accounts for nothing. “But the school compound cannot be a thoroughfare. It is against our regulations.” Talking with such a stubborn, naïve and bold young man, the old priest used a last resort: “What I always say is: let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” I guess Obi thought this sentence didn’t show much education and disdained it. After all, Obi ended this round of confrontation with a stance of winner. However, what he said and did equals ruining the root, the moral bottom line of the local people. He always thought religion is a kind of thing, which is full of “narrow ideas” and only practiced by those “less-educated ones”. But just as the senior priest said, “we follow the practice of our fathers”, religion is not something can be simply labeled “true” or “false”, for it is the cream or crystal of a specific nation, originating from its history, culture and politics. Obi should have noticed religion is a rather important factor of the social customs.
 
On the whole, the author never let the story to be puzzling. Instead, plots in “Dead Men’s Path” is simply enough for us to accept what the author strived to let us know: Obi has many qualities that a successor need, and he should have been able to make it, if only he had curbed his ambition, not letting it to defy some much social customs. Success is not one man’s business. It involves the whole society around him. We have the right to be confident to make the world we live better with our ideas, but we don’t boast the privilege to let our personal dream to go utterly against the more powerful and influential force—the social customs. These things are special because one can’t simply say they are right or wrong. They are the unwritten norm that we have to accept and conform with. In other words, there are many things including the social customs that we are born to accept. Never try to change it by force, even if you think you are 200% right!
 
“Let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” This pithy and meaningful sentence told us an eternal maxim: the world provides a stage for us to be persons we want to be, but the stage is not unlimited. Don’t make a scene of yourself by trying to alter every aspects of the bigger world. You have your responsibility to observe all the rules of the game, no matter it is written or not. The world is always cleverer than you on the whole, not you. 

30.5.07 09:44