Paper Topic:

Analyze the role of community. Discuss the role of tradition mass psychology, and social pressure in `A rose for Emily` by William Faulkner and `Dead men`s path` by Chinua Achebe`

Although born a world and decades apart , both William Faulkner and Chinua Achebe are fascinated by tensions that permeate traditional tightly-knit communities , especially the tension between tradition (the established , the well-known , the familiar ) and what Achebe 's Michael Obi celebrates as modern methods (the new , the unproven , the unfamiliar . In both Faulkner 's A Rose for Emily (1931 ) and Achebe 's Dead Men 's Path (1953 ) these tensions erupt in profound and provocative ways , drawing attention to not only the problems that arise as these tensions are made manifest but also the

degree of social myopia that occurs when , as Obi proves , individuals are shaped by a misguided zeal (Achebe 478 ) for either ideas from the past or the promise of the future

Emily Grierson is very much a fixture of the town in which she lives At once a tradition , a duty , and a care ' she is a sort of hereditary obligation upon [a] town (30 ) that sees her as both a symbol of their shared heritage and proof of the town 's progressive stance and devotion to more modern ideas (30 ) that effectively remove Emily from prominence . For Emily , though , modern ideas are minor inconveniences in her determined attempts to maintain the traditions that had established her family , in her mind at least , as at once central to the town 's history and distanced from its day-to-day workings they were a family , as the townspeople remember , that held themselves a little too high for what they really were (32 . In this sense of superiority lies , too , one of the focal points of the pressures that Emily is forced to endure , first from her father for whom no young men were good enough to court his daughter (32 , then from herself as she internalizes the tradition of aloofness as a means of disconnecting herself from the town (hidden under the fazade of noblesse oblige , and finally , from the townspeople themselves , who reimagine Emily 's eccentricities by way of reinforcing their own belief in modern ideas and town history . These pressures come together at the story 's end when the town is forced to confront the image of the remains of Homer Watson , an outsider who reminds them of not only Emily 's overwhelming pride but also their own complicity in his murder and imprisonment in the Grierson tradition ' Unwilling to admit that she had been cast aside by Homer , Emily poisons him unwilling to confront their own myopic attachment to the Griersons as symbols , the townspeople turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the implications of arsenic and foul odors emanating from the Grierson house

Death and myopia conjoin similarly in Achebe 's Dead Men 's Path as Micheal and Nancy Obi , symbols of modern ideas ' and new ways , find their passionate commitment to change devolve into an arrogant disregard for the powerful traditions of the village of Ndume . Like Emily , who held dearly to her belief in tradition , Michael is energized , almost obsessively , by a misguided zeal...

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