1. Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe

2. The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
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: somewhere in sands of the desert   
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   
Reel 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?

3. Achebe, about African Literature
“The reason African Literature came into existence is because these things that were supposed to represent [Africans] were inaccurate. There was a vacuum, a gap to be filled”
~Chinua Achebe

4. Chinua Achebe - brief biography
Born 1930 in a Christian family in Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria
Novelist, poet, critic & professor
Received the Nigerian National merit Award in 1987
By 1995 over 8 million copies of Things Fall Apart were sold

5. Igbo Society Social & Political Structures
Lack of centralized political structures
Lived in autonomous villages & towns, ruled by their elders
Organized in patrilineages
Democracy was obtained through a council of elders, age groups, councils of chiefs, women’s associations, and secret societies

6. Igbo Society Marriage Customs
Marriages were discussed in depth as they brought families & entire villages together
Most husbands practiced polygamy
Igbo women lived in separate houses, cooked for themselves, and raised their own children
Unhappy women could leave a marriage

7. Igbo Society Igbo Religion (polytheistic)
Chukwu - (the supreme being) is everywhere at the same time--therefore there are no shrines or altars for worship
Ekwensu - trickster god who caused problems
Ikenga - a wooden carving that symbolizes a man’s strength & success--a priest invokes a spirit into it & the men consult it for advice
Chi - a person’s personal god…follows you throughout life and can be either malevolent or benevolent…but chi does not control destiny

8. Things Fall Apart - background
Story is set between 1860 & written between 1952 & 1958; a time when Nigeria was finally ending colonial rule
Central themes –
Destiny
Hero cycle / tragic hero
Religion / Spirituality
Cultural clash / colonialism