31 pages • 1 hour read
Chinua AchebeDead Men’s Path
Chinua AchebeFiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Further Reading: Literature
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)
This classic novel of English-language modern African fiction is considered Achebe’s masterpiece and comprises the first part of his African Trilogy, along with No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964). Things Fall Apart addresses the same problem of Tradition Versus Modernity seen in “Dead Men’s Path” by exploring the impact of European colonization on an Igbo village, tracing life from the precolonial to the colonial period.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899)
This provocative tale is at once damning of colonization’s horrors while simultaneously repeating many of the Orientalist stereotypes and tropes that can be found throughout Western fiction about Africa. Achebe cited this novel as one of his main motivations for writing about Africa, as he wanted to share more realistic and nuanced depictions of Africans.
Further Reading: Beyond Literature (Nonfiction)
Orientalism by Edward Said (1978)
This book is a quintessential study of how Europeans harnessed art, literature, and science in the service of imperial projects through the use of stereotypes about the “Oriental Other.” This book revolutionized the study of postcolonial literature and its impact on the humanities and social sciences continues to this day. While focused specifically on imperialist impacts on Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, many of the concepts raised in Orientalism can be applied to other postcolonial nations.
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