“Vengeful Creditor”
Provision of public services can be untenable in the absence of appropriate forecasting and satisfactory finances. Achebe elucidates, “After only a term of free education the government withdrew the scheme for fear of going bankrupt. It would seem on the advice of its experts the Education Ministry had planned initially for eight hundred thousand children. In the event one million and half turned up.” Obviously, the demand for the free primary education would overstrain the extant monetary resources. The forecasts did not satisfactorily accommodate the adverse discrepancy of the learners who would turn up for the scheme.
The Emenike family’s servants take part what Karl Marx would brand a proletariat's revolution. The servants such as “Small boy”, the gardener and Abigail (the baby nurse) vacate their jobs so that they can go back to school. Mr. Emenike disheartens the gardener when the gardener affirms that he wants to go recommence schooling. Mr. Emenike taunts him, “You are not fifteen…you are at least twenty, no headmaster will admit you into a primary school.” Mr. Emenike grasps that his place as a Bourgeois is endangered and he may misplace all servants should the primary education-triggered revolution endure. He dispirits the gardener by awarding him two selections: either he preserves his job or follows the primary education which is not likely to mature.
Martha’s epiphany on class consciousness reveals, in the resolution, when she contemplates: “And that thing that calls himself a man talks to me about the craze for education. All his children go to school, even the one that is only two years; but that is no craze. Rich people have no craze. It is only when the children of poor widows like me want to go with the rest that it becomes a craze.” Martha makes out that the wealthy are indifferent to the poor’s appeal for education. Mr. Emenike’s perceptions deduce that he does not champion the enablement of the lowly people by way of education. Martha’s consciousness precludes her from assailing Veronica any further for she is a fatality of class suppression. If Veronica had the prospect to join school, the idea of exterminating the baby would not have transpired in her mind.
“Dead Men’s Path”
Michael Obi harnesses Tyrannical leadership when he independently undertakes to seal the path. Achebe explains, “Heavy sticks were planted closely across the path at the two places where it entered and left the school premises. These were further strengthened with barbed wire.” He makes the verdict without conferring the villagers because he looks at the usage of the path as a “ a pagan ritual.” The closure of the path is a denouement for a catastrophic skirmish that implicates Michael Obi and the villagers. The autocratic mindset obstructs Obi from forethought regarding the disparaging confrontation from the villagers.
Obi anticipates to vehemently launch change in the community when he declares, "The whole purpose of our school…is to eradicate just such beliefs (regarding the path) as that. Dead men do not require footpaths. The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas." Even though Obi’s argument is logical, its applicability is restricted considering that education has not propagated profound roots in the community. Obi should have conceded that the annihilation of such beliefs was going to materialize after a long-term explosion of education; terminating the path forcefully would be counterproductive ultimately because the villagers would not give up the path due to its momentous spiritual consequence. Accommodating the villagers would have forestalled the devastation of the salient gardens.
