Discussion #4: Things fall apart
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“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” . . . these words from W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” published in 1919, seemed to many of his contemporaries (and to historians since then) to capture perfectly the zeitgeist of the post WWI years, when everything that people thought was firmly established about western culture appeared to be crumbling into disarray around them. Another famous quotation from that poem reflects the anxiety about the motivations behind the changes taking place then and over the coming years: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
These words have continued to resonate because they describe the feelings people have not just about the first half of the 20th century, but about any period of sustained upheaval and change in society–which some might say we are also experiencing now as well, 100 years later. Yeats’ poem has continued to speak to other generations (and other people in other countries; the phrase was used by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe for the title of his novel about the European colonization of his nation in the 19th century), as it identifies a constant issue about how difficult social change can be: how it frightens us when things we are familiar with are threatened or destroyed; how it sometimes seems that the worst influences triumph, at least in the beginning; but sometimes, in the end, how necessary it is for some elements to come to an end so that something else can begin. The hope is that the “something else” will ultimately be an improvement and will bring progress in the direction of a better world, although of course that depends on how one defines “better” and what one thinks of the elements that are being lost.
For this discussion, write a post in which you do two things:
1). Refer to at least one work by an author we have read (or will read, if you have jumped ahead in the syllabus to some of the coming works) to explain how that author portrayed something that was “falling apart” or some “center” (something generally considered to be valuable about the established society) that was in danger of no longer being able to “hold.” What did the writer see as being threatened or lost in the modern world, and what feelings were associated with that change (fear? anxiety? anger? surprise? excitement?). I am particularly interested in hearing you discuss writers from this current section of the class, but you can refer to those from the Romantic Period or Victorian Age if you wish.
2). Make a connection to something that is happening currently that seems similar to this event or situation or change, or that might be a continuation of it, or a backlash against it. How do people feel about what is going on today? Are they welcoming this element? Resisting it? In what way might it be bringing out the “worst” or the “best” in people?
