Obi is the protagonist of the story, as well as the architect of his own downfall. He is a young, excited teacher, ready to change the world with his new ideas. He acts in service of the Christian missionaries that spread across the world to bring their religion and Western ideals to those they feel must be reformed and redeemed. By sending Obi, in all his enthusiasm, to head up a school in a village, they ultimately choose to light a fuse. Obi is headstrong and sure that he is right about how people should live, to the degree that he can dismiss traditional beliefs without a second thought. He is ready to work hard in service of his singular, modern educational mode, and is thrilled that the teachers he will oversee have no families because they will be able to spend all their time listening to him and doing what he wants them to do. Even when confronted by a teacher about the path he wants to remove, he believes he knows better. He wants to believe that all he needs to do is tell the villagers that they are wrong, and they will fall in line and agree with him. Obi is able to convince himself that there is no need to respect others’ beliefs. In doing so, he replicates the colonization of the mind that he experienced during his own training and education under the missionaries.