Chinua Achebe borrowed the title of his great book from W. B. Yeats’ 1919 poem “The Second Coming,” which announced the collapse of the teleology that had driven western civilization since the birth of Jesus: “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.”
For Yeats, these words serve as eulogy for the collapse of western civilization in WWI. For Achebe, they serve to eulogize the collapse of traditional tribal customs caused by the British invasion of Nigeria in the 19th century. But Achebe is not nostalgic for those tribal traditions, mainly because they included paternal violence toward women and children. Indeed, the young men in Achebe’s novel find refuge and a new kind of order in service to British colonialism. Not that this post-colonial writer is justifying colonization so much as he is celebrating the change from the rule of custom (tribalism) to the rule of law (which may be oppressive in other ways). As many great novelists do, Achebe explores the meaningfulness of a historical event, however, he does not promote the mortmain of exhausted and cruel traditions.
Don Melander
Concord