Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe

● 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?

Are things falling apart? Can the center hold?

Theme ● The idea(s) around which a story is centered. ● A theme expresses a statement of truth about the human condition. ● A theme is what we walk away with from a work of literature. ● Theme is the central building block for the entire work of literature.

Theme is NOT ● Not a moral ● Not a summary ● Not a one word topic ● Not a conflict like man vs. nature

The theme IS ● A statement about the human condition that is universally true. ● A universal truth about life. ● A truth about what it is like to be alive. And can be written in once sentence.

So how do you really “find” the theme? After reading a poem, story, novel, etc., decide what the story is about. Make a short list of one word topics: Love, Hate, Money, Greed Risk ( you get the picture)

Next step ● What does the story/author seem to say about the topic? For Cinderella: Topics—family, love, friends, hopes Family: Family members often treat each other more severely than they would others. Love: Sometimes people find love unexpectedly.

Test those themes ● Re-visit the themes from the previous slide, and ask yourself the following question: ● Is the theme true inside the story? ● Is it true outside of the story? If the answer is “yes” then you probably have a good solid theme.

Now Think About TFA ● Topics?