Comparing the Second Coming and to Things Fall Apart

The Second Coming Compared to Things Fall Apart

The book Things Fall Apart , by Chinua Achebe , is very similar to the poem , The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats.

Seeing the line “Things fall apart” in the poem , Achebe makes an outstanding association. At this point in time he says to himself, “I should name my book Things Fall Apart, It will show the main idea of the book.”

One of the many coinciding concepts between the two is the daunted apprehension of both the poem and the book. In Things Fall Apart it seems like whenever the main character, Okonkwo, gains hope things happen to fall apart . The contents of The Second Coming told of a chaotic world and a base that could not hold because of it’s own inner conflicts. In Addition to the synonymous feeling both the book and the poem give, they both expose a great shift from and old era to a new era. The Second Coming reveals an apocolypse. Yeats shows this change by describing the conversions our world, as a global community, made throughout history. Key lines that refer to these changes in time are “Turning and Turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer”. These lines refer to the constant adjustments we have to make and also the fact that we cannot go back in time . Chinua Achebe also reveals a major shift by describing Umuofa as it was in the beginning. In describing Umuofa as it was originally he makes it easier to catch sight of the major changes throughout the story.

Another coinciding idea in both pieces is the sacrifice of something to avoid changes that come along . Okonkwo ends his life as a last resort . In doing this he feels that he saves his honor and heritage . He also kills himself to dodge the pain and suffering that Christianity brought to his culture . “The Second Coming” warns us of an apocolypse . The apocolypse is the end of civilization in our world . What makes the poem so synonymous to the book is that in either case it is not possible to stop the changes from happening .

A fourth coinciding idea in these two literary pieces is the loss of control of a higher power over a lower power .