Dead Men's Path

page 269 from the text.

Is right to change something important to people, and just disregard their thoughts and feelings towards it, just to benefit themselves?

Dead man's Path by Chinua Achebe is a perfect example of this.  The story takes place in Ndume, Nigeria, a new educated headmaster, Michael Obi, is to step in and take over. He decides to close a path that the village has been using for a long time and disregards the feelings of the village people and their traditions.  In return karma bites him in the butt. His wife dies in childbirth, the school is vandalized and the then he is chastised!

An important thing to mention about the setting of this story is that it takes place in 1949, one of the main time periods of colonization ("apartheid")

Wikipedia states " Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority 'non-white' inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and minority rule was maintained."

I feel that this is why Chinua wrote this story; he wanted to get the message across that you can't just come in and change the traditions of people if they've been doing it for as long as people can remember. I also believed he wanted to show how cruel people can be towards people in a lessor power and that most the times they can just walk in and change things even if it isn't the right thing to do! 

I feel this because in this story Michael Obi kind of represents the people coming in to try and colonize the Africans, he wants to change the way the people have lived even if they feel he shouldn't and the fact that he got punished was the way the Africans feel towards these higher power people. They want them to leave and let them practice their beliefs and traditions the way they always have!

Personally I believe regardless of what people think; everyone should have the freedom to believe in what they want, and to practice the traditions that they have always been doing. People need to just realize that everyone is equal and we should all live in peace, but this isn't going to happen anytime soon unfortunately 

Eleanor Rigby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaRNrDaoMqw

Most of all McCartney's songs came to him while fooling around with his piano. In 1966 the song Eleanor Rigby came to him, however at first the song wasn't called Eleanor Rigby but was actually called Miss Daisy Hawkins. McCartney recalled he got his big idea from: 

"I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it. The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head... 'Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church'. I don't know why. I couldn't think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me, and all the lonely people. But I thought that people would think it was supposed to be about my Dad sitting knitting his socks. Dad's a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the name McKenzie.".

He got the name Eleanor from a woman who was in the movie HELP!, her name was Eleanor Bron.

History: Close to where Lennon and McCartney sunbathed and met during a fete in 1957, a grave stone of Eleanor Rigby was discovered! The two claimed to have no idea that it was there and claimed it could have been subconscious and not so much a fluke!

Personally I enjoyed the song,  I haven't really listened to any Beatles up until I heard this! The song is easily understood, and the catchy lyrics are easily stuck in your head. After hearing it I had troubles getting the song out of my head and found myself singing it quite often!