The Second Coming

Following Nwoye’s departure from Okonkwo’s Mbanta compound to become a Christian, Okonkwo sits in his hut and ponders the state of himself and the state of his son, where he has a temporary reminiscence of an old powerful nickname. Achebe tells us,

Hello my Christian friends, welcome to my father Okonkwo funeral for the converts of the church. I will not stand here in front of you today in a Christian church and tell you of the man the ibo people of Umoufia saw. Yes, I will tell you that my father had a prosperous life, but I will mainly tell you of the man I saw who killed good people before killing himself. I was told to write about the great Okonkwo’s life, and I will tell you nothing but the truth through my eyes.

Following Okonkwo’s seven year exile, the village Okonkwo once knew has changed due to the influence of Christianity and the influence of the British missionaries and officers. Okonkwo’s initial reaction is to arm the clan against the Colonisers and drive the British people out of Igbo.

We can also see his knowledge of this belief transformation happening in his village when he writes, "?and were not unduly perturbed when they found out she had fled to join the Christians". This tells us that he didn't really care about the people who left the tribe. He understood why they left but as he said, ?it was a "good riddance".

-After Nwoye is lured into the Christian religion and abandons his culture and family, Okonkwo is ashamed and states, "you have all see the great abomination of your brother. Now he is no longer my son or your brother. I will only have a son who is a man, who will hold his head up among my people" (172). Nwoye's father disowns him only because he chooses a path untraditional to his culture. The serious, frustrated, and unhappy mood that is created in Okonkwo's statement gives the reader an idea of how much the Ibo culture values tradition, choice, and family.

“Although Nwoye had been attracted to the new faith from the very first day, he kept it a secret. He dared not go too near the missionaries for fear of his father” (Achebe 149). Nwoye refuse to go to the church and enter but everyday he would go to the marketplace and list to their short stories. “ And he was already beginning to learn some of the simple stories that they told” (Achebe 150). Eventually Nwoye summons enough courage to enter the church but one of Okonkwo’s cousins was passing by and happened to see him. So he quickly rushed to Okonkwo and told him the news. “Nwoye turned round to walk into the inner compound when his father suddenly overcome with fury, sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck” (Achebe 151). Nwoye eventually told him where he was and Okonkwo became very angry but then he was overcome with sadness. Okonkwo didn’t know how he could raise such a weak son. The cultural collision not only changed the way Nwoye felt but also his relationship with his father and

The book “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe is a fictional look at the social and cultural life of an African tribe of the lower Niger River region. It depicts the every day life of the tribe and its members. It also shows the culture and customs of the tribe.

Things fall apart, this phrase being used in both the novel title Things Fall Apart and the poem written by Yeats, “The Second Coming” keeps us wondering how both are related. Achebe uses Yeats’ poem as an epigraph to foreshadow how the events in the novel later on might occur. Reading the epigraph, we come to understand that Yeats is referring to an image of disaster and to a society that is losing control. In Things Fall Apart, the community faces some changes that affect the lives of certain main characters and leads to a very severe disaster. Achebe uses a lot of imagery and dualism in his novel to portray certain messages to the readers and to clarify his point. Also, Achebe wanted to answer back any writer who criticized the Africans and insulted them. He wanted the voice of the Africans to be heard and to take a stand when the Christians came in and tried to change a lot in the traditions that were present. Both, the poem and the novel are related in a way that shows how the downfall of the main character, Okonkwo, happened and what lead to it. Both writers have many things in common in their writings that can be compared in a social and religious way. Achebe uses double meaning in order to pass on his messages to the readers.

put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. I

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart shares a rather large amount of parallels to “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, and this is due to no coincidence. Achebe had wanted to write so that he could show that the Africans were not savages, as some pieces of literature had suggested, and once he read “The Second Coming”, he knew that he found his inspiration, hence why the two pieces share frequent similarities. Chinua Achebe even titled his book after a line in the first stanza of the poem: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

Fear is a powerful tool that if used incorrectly, can control how one lives. Okonkwo’s life is one that is dominated by fear. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart follows the Ibo people, set during the time of the colonization of West Africa, in the town of Umoufia. The protagonist, Okonkwo, is a strong follower of his culture’s rigid expectations and practices. While Okonkwo’s steadfast adherence earns the respect of the townsmen, many detest the cultural expectations and practices they are forced to follow. When Christian missionaries introduce Christianity to Umoufia, many of the Ibo people are quick to convert, including Okonkwo’s own son. This new religion slowly undermines the Ibo culture and religion Okonkwo firmly believes in, leading to his downfall. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s fear of weakness along with the arrival of Christianity causes Okonkwo’s downfall.

The Igbo Tribe went through plenty of changes. They had their own way of living, but when the Christians arrived they brought new ideas and traditional ways to the Igbo. Throughout the novel “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, the author uses mood, irony, and foreshadowing to capture the audience’s attention and show that death affects everyone.

“The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats is a strong, emotional poem about how everything, even the most strongest of creations eventually falls apart, with Yeats using the coming of the Messiah from Revelations to show how society will crumble and break apart when Christ comes for the final battle against Satan. Chinua Achebe, writer of “Things Fall Apart," used “The Second Coming” as a basis to show how African culture was dismantled by the appearance of Britain officials in Nigeria, who brought their own religion and who were not afraid to use their advanced technology against the natives if they opposed the new order. Achebe put a particularly amount of importance on four specific lines in the poem, lines 3-6, using each line to show a different breakdown of African society. Achebe showed the breaking away of citizens from their tribes to join the white men and their complete disregard for their religious beliefs. He also showed the Africans fear of the white man and his forces, and allowing members of the tribe with courage to oppose the white man’s rule to be cut down and slain, instead of the entire tribe standing behind them in support.

Both Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Obi in No Longer at Ease represent departures from two worlds, left in a kind of limbo which offers no way out and no salvation. Okonkwo rejects the new religion of the Christian missionaries, even though it is evident that the ancient customs which he wants to continue to practice are out of favor. Obi rejects both the ancient customs (one should not marry an osu) and the modern principles (one should not take bribes) in order to try to reconcile the varying aspects of his life which are in conflict with one another. Thus, the titles of both works reflect the condition of a decaying tribal African culture which suddenly collides with the decaying culture of a Western world. It is no accident that Achebe chose a phrase from the Irish poet W. B. Yeats' "The Second Coming" it is a poem which encapsulates everything the novel seems to say about the modern world, whether it is Western or African: something is lacking "the centre cannot hold." This paper will analyze the problem of center which could not hold in Achebe's Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease by putting two significant lines from the novels into context and explaining their importance.

Structured in the form of an allegory, this poem has a political undertone that haunts Nigeria and its journey toward independence. The devastation occurred during and after the civil war could have been averted if the situation was handled by the mature statesmen. The Young God’s impassioned temperament, “Power is burning in our hands like/the sun/ Or have you by your quiescence / changed roles and he is now your master?”, displeases the Old God, and he restrains from it, “You speak like the young of god / or man. By the grace or curse of man / you came into being only a thousand years ago / many there were like you who died / before they came or lived only / a while and died in ignorance/ or simply wasted away for lack of sacrifice” (Okara