"The Second Coming" in "Things fall apart"

One of the things that caught my attention while reading the novel "Things Fall Apart" written by Chinua Achebe was the first four lines of it, which correspond to the epigraph that coincidentally was a fragment of a poem that we have already analyzed in this course, "The Second Coming" of W. B. Yeats, and from which the novel takes its title.

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

While doing some research about this poem, I’ve found out that this is one of the most usually quoted poems, particularly in Western literature, since it represents and describes in a flawless way different periods of human history that had happened in which the world seems to be falling apart due to the fact that, as we all know, this poem and especially this part of it, gives the image of a future or another era which is not very promising, in fact, it expresses a chaotic setting for what was happening and what will happen.

In the case of the novel of Chinua Achebe, this epigraph serves as an introduction to the book and not only gives the title to it, but also it is used for the sake of showing how the imperialism came and collapsed the system by making a direct relation between the context of production of Yeats’ poem in Europe (I World War), in which everything seemed to be chaotic and awful, and the rising chaos produced by the expansion of Europe to Africa. It gives me the idea that by extracting the title form this poem, Achebe was trying to summarize the downfall of the Igbo culture and its inhabitants caused by the European missionaries and conquerors.

Moreover and making a mini analysis of a few lines, the phrase “things fall apart” as I already mentioned gives an accurate image of the following chaos in the novel; then, the second part of that line “the center cannot be hold” is a reference to what it was happening in Africa with the imperialism in the sense that the institutions, the traditions and the political and social system in general of the Igbo culture were collapsing and been replaced by European costumes, since for example during the novel the traditions and socio-cultural organization were questioned and challenged by the missionaries, having as a result the mixture of two sets of social codes for living.

Finally, the last part of the epigraph, “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” is obviously related to the dreadful consequences of imperialism since the “second coming” (meaning the missioners and conquerors with their message, costumes and traditions) brought the ruin, anarchy and destruction of the Igbo culture by changing, demoralizing and dehumanizing a community, and not only them but also all the cultures that have suffered the outcomes of colonialism during that period or other.    

In a nutshell, I personally find outstanding the way in which poems and different pieces of writing describe specific topics and issues related to a given context, but at the same time they are universal, hence, they can be used in such different settings, just as Achebe uses this epigraph written in the language of the missionaries and colonizers to show the inner vision of what was happening with the colonized culture.