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Things Fall Apart Changes

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The world is ever changing and the majority of change comes from the outcomes on battlefields. Change comes from the destruction of war. The outcome of the war can either bring peace or it can bring something far worse than what the original conditions were. In Chinua Achebe’s world, it was not necessarily a full blown war that brought change, but to the Ibo people it must have felt as if they were being invaded. The white men came into their village of Umuofia and turned everything upside down. Most of the tribe’s people did not understand the changes that they brought to their way of life. The Ibo people slowly lost their way and were changed into something that to them was unrecognizable from their traditional ways (Achebe 174). In “The …show more content…

In the poem “The Second Coming”, Yeats writes “the falcon cannot hear the falconer” (Yeats n.p.). This line goes with the idea of the world falling apart because the falcon cannot do its job without its master or leader the falconer. This applies to World War I because although there were generals ordering men on the battlefield, most people saw the war as aimless killing. Yeats must have thought that the soldiers or the falcons were being sent into the battle without sound orders from their leaders or the falconers. This shows the destruction that occurred during the war due to the ignorance of the leaders. Achebe would agree with Yeats on the idea that without sound directions from leaders the people do not know how to act properly. In Things Fall Apart, Mr. Smith captures all the leaders of Umuofia and the tribe does not know how to act without them. They do not fight for them back, and they do not question the orders given by Mr. Smith’s missionaries. The people of the tribe end up paying for their leaders’ release, therefore giving in the Mr. Smith’s demands. Without true orders from sound leadership the Ibo world and the world of World War I face problems that can lead to their

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