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

Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

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Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming. Achebe’s use of Yeat’s poetry and the connection between the two. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

Achebe’s use of Yeat’s poetry and the connection

between the two.

Page 2: Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

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?

Page 3: Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

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.

Page 4: Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

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

Page 5: Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

• 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.

Page 6: Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

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.

Page 7: Things Fall Apart and The Second Coming

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?