Tom Lee
2007.5.21.
Draft Two
A Excellent Fighter
A good fighter needs two things: ambition, and courage.
There are such a great number of good fighters in the human history. Because of their endless struggle against the backward force, people get civilized, and the society moves forward. There are barely any virtues inappropriate for them. To honor them, we give them the title Prometheus, the God who sacrificed himself to bring fire to the world, and their sagas-legends will be internally remembered from generation to generation.
In the story of Dead Men Path, by Chinua Achebe, the protagonist Mr Obi is just characterized as one fighter of this kind. It is a story about Obi, who’s an ambitious and progressive headmaster, after bravely closing the old tribal path for the dead men across the school, got his work ruined by the violence of the superstitious villagers at last. Though not a success, he keeps his honour by his fight. People can easily find ambition and bravery from his trial. In a word, he performs a same excellent fighter.
He is a man of great ambition. From the words of Mission Authority and the Narrator in the start of the story, readers get to know that Obi has a long history behind him against the superstition, which proves his everlasting ambition of eradicating it. In this particular field, “he has many wonderful ideas”, “enthusiasm” and even “designated him a pivotal teacher in the official records”. His ambition of his work in the new school can also be easily told from his joyful talk with his wife. “We shall make a good job of it, shan’t we?” When he comments that the colleagues’ unmarried family situation is a good thing, readers can learn without effort that all he concerns is the school. As we may notice, “she is complete infected by his passion for modern and his denigration of these old and superannuated people”. Through this tiny detail, it shows us what magical effect his ambition has.
Then, Obi stands for the excellent fighter, not only for his ambitions, but also for his admiring courage against the superstition. It is widely known that “he is outspoken in his condemnation of the narrow views of these of these old and often less-educated ones”. After knowing there was a big row for the dead men’s path in the past, he still made his decision without hesitation, ”It was sometime ago. But it will not be used now”. It’s hard to image a cowardly man will do the same. Though his strength is limited, he still chooses to challenge the backward force of the village, which is shown especially in the visit of the tribal priest, who stands for the superstition of the village. The words from the priest are stern and severe, like “this path was here before you were born and before your father was born”, “If you reopen the path, we shall have nothing to quarrel about”, but Obi “listened with a smile on his face” with his dignity. Facing the cow of the priest, he said directly ”The whole purpose of our school is to eradicate just such beliefs as that”. Because of his courage, he stands erectly for what he believes right, and he is fearless towards failure.
As a whole, though not a success, Obi is an excellent fighter, for he contains two spirits, the most important ones: ambition and courage.
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