Assignment 10: Outlining Theme

Chinua Achebe's "Dead men's Path" is a story about the conflicts caused by African colonialism.

  1. Obi is young and zealously interested in modern ideals, thinks the school unprogressive before he gains authority.
    1. Obi has a secondary school education, making him a prime candidate for a headmaster, and was "outspoken in his condemnation of the narrow views of these older and often less-educated ones"
    2. Makes the school into a compound, drastic changes to modern designs.

  2. A path intersects the school, represents the village's resistance to new ideas.
    1. Obi's attempt to block the path is imposing what he thinks is better on the villagers.
    2. The priest tells him "this path was here before you were born, and before your father was born"

 3. The lack of compromise between the school and village, leads the superstitions of the villagers to damage the school.
    1. Obi offered to move the path, but the priest didn't agree.
    2. The white supervisor writes a scathing report on the school, and the "tribal war situation developing..." "Arising in part from the misguided zeal of the new headmaster"

Alice Munro's "Boys and Girls" is a story about a girl who can't escape the gender roles of her family

   1.  The girl likes to work with her father, but her mother wants to have her in the house to help.
     1. She associates the work with her father with good things, and enjoys the outdoors
     2. The mother is counting the days till the son, Laird, is old enough to work
 
  2. The girl grows attached to the two horses, seeing herself and her brother in them
     1. The male horse was slow and easy to handle, sooty and indifferent, much like her younger brother until she drags him with her to watch the horse be shot. Afterwards he shows more interest in working with his father.
     2. The female horse was energetic and regal, when it comes time to kill her, she sets it free instead of keeping it penned.

   3. The girl doesn't know why she let Flora go, even thinking it was just making more work for her father.
     1. She hopes to avoid being revealed as why flora got away, and would have gotten away with it had her brother not tattled.
     2. Her father dismisses her in the end, absolving her of guilt by saying "she's only a girl."