Yeats' Essence from "The Second Coming" Found in Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"

Nowadays people tend to say they read just because someone recommends it (novel, comic, manga, etc.) or just because one is obliged to do it at school or at university. Have you ever questioned the story or just its title? Why was it written within a certain font, colour or even what does it come from or what does it mean? Does that affect the story?

The so-read novel in some English-speaking countries and across Africa called: "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe has its title because of a Poem written not by him, but by Mr. Yeats. This poem is named "The Second Coming" and represents the atmosphere of a post-war Europe in crisis and downfall.

First of all, some biographies:

William Butler Yeats, the writer of the poem "The Second Coming", born in Sandymount, Ireland, during the 1860s was a one of the main men behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with others, he also founded The Abbey Theatre. In 1923, he was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Literature and was described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation". After being awarded, he is one of the fewest people that had completed their greatest pieces of art or wonders without failing.

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, the novelist who wrote a Master Piece in 1958 named: "Things Fall Apart", was born in Nigeria in 1930 (November 16th) and died at the age of 82 (March 21st, 2013). He was a novelist, poet, professor and a well-known critic. His books are commonly read in modern African literature and also in some English-speaking countries around the world. At the age of 8 he could read in English and in Igbo. He read Shakespeare, religious books from the missionaries and also heard storytelling of tribes about his own culture.

"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?

According to Yeats, the Europeans were losing power little by little and there's an atmosphere of some kind of revelation. This is mainly what he expresses in his poem that Achebe found interesting for using and pick it up for his book. Most novels in Africa or about the African culture had been written by Europeans as they were seen as mere savages, this occurred by the time "Things Fall Apart" appeared.

Achebe uses this poem and the main idea in a way to re-tale his own story about how he encountered the missionaries from Europe and how he also encountered Christianity and made him stand between a crossroad of culture between the European and the Igbo with his own beliefs.

In the second part of the novel, one can perceive that Europeans were merely looking for 3 things, these were related to: Commerce, Christianity and Civilization itself as African people were seen as savages without any knowledge at all. There is also a revelation that comes from the exiled Okonkwo that wants the strangers to disappear and not let them teach their beliefs, culture and religion when he reappears in his old lands.

As Yeats tries to express the loss of power of the strangers, Achebe uses this to make the reader believe that there is no highly strength in them or even in the protagonist. But at the very end of the book, the Igbo are willing for revenge and so they have a meeting for this "war" that was coming when things were already falling apart. Okonkwo is one of the members who wants a more aggressive action. However, during the meeting, a messenger arrives that brings news directly from the missionaries and tell them to stop the meeting. Okonkwo, enraged, kills him. As he realizes that his clan will not have this war with the strangers, he hangs himself proud but lonely.

In my opinion, the book was perfect as it was with simple English and with African names on it letting us be inside this African story the whole time and living every feeling or emotion that the characters and the protagonist felt. It will be amazing to read things which were motivated by other pieces of art like in this case with the poem of William B. Yeats in the novel "Things Fall Apart", the life story of Okonkwo and his clan.

 Sources:

• Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe (1958).
• The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats (1919-1920).