Public Good - “Vengeful Creditor”
The ‘free primary education’ (a public good) elicits a deficiency of workers such as carriers (at the supermarket) and domestic servants. Achebe observes, “It had brought even worse to the homes, Mrs. Emenike had lost three servants including her baby-nurse since the beginning of the school year.” The servants are inspired by the free education, so they relinquish their jobs to secure knowledge, at no cost, so that would surge the gambles of social mobility.
Inequality - “Vengeful Creditor”
Emenike family subsists in lavishness based on Mrs. Emenike’s shopping tendencies. Comparatively, Veronica’s family survives in wretched paucity whereby “ Her mother, a near-destitute widow who spent all hours of the day in the farm, on market days, in the market left Vero to carry the burden of caring for the younger children.” Veronica’s mother is underprivileged so she cannot have sufficient money nurses to care for her children while way. However, the Emenike’s have abundant funds to hire servants. Whereas the Emenike children access fundamental necessities effortlessly, Veronica and her siblings “fend for themselves picking palm-kernels and catching grasshoppers to eat.” For that reason, the two families signify the permeating inequity in Nigeria.
Education - “Dead Men’s Path”
“Dead Men’s Path” stresses the materiality of schooling in pre and and then post independence Nigeria. Achebe explains, “He (Michael Obi) had had sound secondary school education which designated him a "pivotal teacher" in the official records and set him apart from the other headmasters in the mission field.” Michael Obi’s education characterizes empowerment that qualifies him to secure a career as a headmaster. Short of the education, it would have been impracticable for him to land the job. The edification is exceedingly westernized as it makes Obi to frown on the conventional Nigerian views.
