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Allegory
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—Things Fall Apart:
The title of the novel, Things Fall Apart, is an allusion to W.B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming." The poem begins: "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 Second Coming" is a modernist poem, published by Yeats in 1920. In the poem's three stanzas, the speaker reflects on what he sees as the loss of human decency, values, and morals at the turn of the century. Written only a few years after the conclusion of World War I, "The Second Coming" reflects the growing disillusionment with society many experienced after witnessing the sheer scale of human suffering wrought by new technologies of war. Yeats intimates that society has lost cohesion and a uniting moral purpose, asserting in the poem that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
Things Fall Apart explores the themes present in "The Second Coming" within a postcolonial context. Achebe specifically examines the deterioration of indigenous social cohesion/community that accompanies the senseless violence of colonialism. In Chapter 20, he directly connects this loss of social cohesion to the titular "things fall apart" allusion:
He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
Community is an essential part of humanity. By "put[ting] a knife" on the things that united Okonkwo's tribe and causing them to "fall apart," European colonizers stripped Ibo/Igbo people of support, stability, and dignity.
Related Themes:
Chapter 22
Explanation and Analysis—Parable of the Seeds:
In the following excerpt from Chapter 22, Achebe alludes to the biblical parable of the sower, found in multiple gospels in the New Testament:
Mr. Smith was greatly distressed by the ignorance which many of his flock showed even in such things as the Trinity and the Sacraments. It only showed that they were seeds sown on a rocky soil.
The statement "they were seeds sown on a rocky soil" is a direct allusion to Matthew 13:3-9, where Jesus tells a parable that begins this way: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.”
The parable intimates that people will receive the "seed," or the word of God, differently. For certain people, the Christian gospel will be a seed sown in rocky soil: quick to grow shallow roots (or a surface-level interest in faith) but unable to grow deep roots (true faith) that would anchor them more firmly in the soil. In the passage from Chapter 22, Mr. Smith bemoans the fact that many of his Igbo converts will likely have "shallow roots."
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Black and White:
In Chapter 22, a new White missionary figure is introduced to Okonkwo's clan in Umuofia. Describing that missionary's views, Achebe makes a number of biblical allusions:
[Mr. Brown] saw things as black and white. And black was evil. He saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness. He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in slaying the prophets of Baal.
Mr. Brown firmly believes it his duty to slay the "prophets of Baal," a false idol worshiped by errant Israelites in the Old Testament. The White missionary views the Igbo people he encounters as immoral heathens, "sons of darkness" intentionally and maliciously worshiping false idols instead of the "true" Christian god. Additionally, in referring to the people of Umuofia as "sons of darkness," Mr. Brown associates moral "darkness," or evil, with skin color.
Mr. Brown's position reflects a moral superiority complex many White Christian missionaries carried with them into indigenous communities. In Things Fall Apart, many of the Christian missionaries reveal this superiority complex in the way they speak to non-Christians: with a large measure of unwarranted arrogance and condescension.
Related Themes:
