Chinua Achebe purposely utilizes the "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats to support his themes throughout the book. He also chooses to name his novel "Things Fall Apart." This would not be the only similar theme between the poem and the novel. When you compare both "The Second Coming" and Things Fall Apart, you can see many similarities between the two pieces.
             There are many "events" from the book that coincides with the poem, or you can there are many events from the poem that coincides with the book; nonetheless, they have many similarities between their themes. In "The Second Coming", the world is portrayed as chaotic because the center cannot hold because of its own inner conflicts. This is similar to Things Fall Apart because Okonkwo, one who thinks highly of himself, he may even consider himself to be the center of the world, falls apart because of his own internal conflicts.
             In both literary texts, they both show how over time, things change. In the poem, over time, the falcons, maybe a representation of lower power, are slowly rebelling against the falconer, the higher power so to speak. William Butler Yeats shows us how over time, things change in the very first two lines: "Turning and Turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer". Chinua Achebe also shows us how things change by giving us a description of Umofia in the beginning and then another description of it after the Christians come. That gives the reader a more comparative look between the past and the present. A major theme in both the poem and the novel is the idea of children disobeying their father's cultures or ideas so to say, and going off on their own in search of their beliefs. In "The Second Coming", the line, "the falcon does not hear the falconer" is used to symbolize the loss of control. Yeats utilizes the falco
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