Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

1. Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming Achebe’s use of Yeat’s poetry and the connection between the two.

2. Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;    The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity.     Surely some revelation is at hand;    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.     The darkness drops again but now I know    That twenty centuries of stony sleep    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

3. William Butler Yeats • Irish poet and playwright–A member of the Ascendency (upper class). • Very politically oriented. Was Irish senator for two terms. Intended to be lawyer, but switched to arts and won a Nobel Prize for his literature (1st Irishman to do so) • Protestant, very anti-Catholic (part of the Ascendency) • Wrote poem in 1920 (some say 1919, some say 1921… it doesn’t matter), in response to the horrors of ??? (what’s happening at this time? • During this time, Ireland was finally granted their independence. • This is a poem with obvious Christian overtones, but also illustrates political overtones and innuendos.

4. Things to consider: • Gyre: spiral • Falcon/falconer= slave/master • But there is a unique and very close relationship between the two. • Spiritus Mundi= collective spirit of humanity • The description in stanza 2 is of a sphinx = protector of religious and spiritual knowledge and mysteries. • Originally it was a woman’s head in Greek mythology, but the Egyptians changed it to a man’s head. • Bethlehem= where Jesus was born

5. Stanza 1: Conditions of the modern world: • Stanza 2: description of a great beast. Prediction of the end of the world. • Stanza 3: questioning what is happening and what is to come.

6. Directions: • Annotate the poem to understand the meaning Yeat’s is expressing. (Together as a class) • Relate the poem to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Write a 1-2 page response that explains why Achebe is using this poem and why he uses this title.

7. Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;    The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity.     Surely some revelation is at hand;    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.     The darkness drops again but now I know    That twenty centuries of stony sleep    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?