Honors Day 12: Things Fall Apart
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Character Names
TP-CASTT Process
Okigbo’s “Come Thunder” (Connotation part of TPCASTT to pick apart the poem)
Homework: Read chapters 4-6
Character names
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Okonkwo
Unoka (father)
Nwoye (son)
Ikemefuna (visiting boy)
Anasi (1st wife)
Ekwefi(2nd wife)
Ezinma (favorite daughter)
Ojiugo (3rd Wife)
Obierika (Friend)
Chielo (priestess to oracle)
Agbala (oracle)
Uchendu (uncle)
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Title1: Think about the title before reading the poem.
Paraphrase: Translate the poem into your own words
sentence by sentence (not line by line). Note any pattern
or progression (general to specific, night to day,
chronological, external to internal…).
Connotation: Meaning beyond the literal. How do poetic
devices contribute to meaning and or effect? (Imagery,
simile, metaphor, personification, symbolism, diction, point
of view, etc.; sound devices: alliteration, onomatopoeia,
rhythm, rhyme)
Attitude: Who is the speaker? Who might be his/her
audience? What is the poet’s tone? The speaker’s tone?
Shifts: Are there any shifts in speaker or attitude?
Title2: What does the title mean on an interpretive level?
Theme: What message is the poet trying to get across?
“Come Thunder” by Christopher Okigbo
Now that the triumphant march has
entered the last street corners,
Remember, O dancers, the thunder
among the clouds ...
Now that laughter, broken in two,
hangs tremulous between the
teeth,
Remember, O dancers, the lightning
beyond the earth ...
The drowsy heads of the pods in
barren farmlands witness it,
The homesteads abandoned in this
century’s brush fire witness it:
The myriad eyes of deserted corn
cobs in burning barns witness it:
The smell of blood already floats in
the lavender-mist of the afternoon.
The death sentence lies in ambush
along the corridors of power;
And a great fearful thing already tugs
at the cable of the open air,
A nebula immense and immeasurable,
a night of deep waters-An iron dream unnamed and
unprintable, a path of stone.
The arrows of God tremble at the
gates of light,
The drums of curfew pander to a
dance of death;
Magic birds with the miracle of
lightning flash on their feathers ...
And the secret thing in its heaving
Threatens with iron mask
The last lighted torch of the century
...
Hr 2 Paraphrase
Presently the great parade has come to the end of the road, recollect, body moving
performers, the booming from the sky...
Presently the chuckles, snapped in half, dangles shaking in the mouth, recollect, body
moving performers, the flashes past the horizon...
The scent of plasma and hemoglobin currently drifts in the purple haze of midday.
The promise of mortality waits to attack by the halls of dominance; and a mighty
ominous object currently pulls at the chord of oxygen, the star formation grand and
endless, the darkness of flooding-- a steel fantasy nameless and undescribable, a trail
of rocks.
The sleepy noggins of the seed casings in lifeless fields observe it, the households
deserted in this hundred year's burned scrub observe it: the assorted corneas of
abandoned maize in flaming farm sheds observe it.
Mystical fliers the phenomenon of bolts of electricity glimmer on their plumes...
The shafts of the Almighty quaver at the doors of luminescence, the percussion of
time limit appeases to a rhythmic movement of the end of life.
And the hidden object in its compelled push terrorizes with steel face covering the
final flame of the hundred years.
Hr 2 Connotation
happy times ending--end of journey
need to remember...troubled times
metaphor: laughter--hard to get/hard to feel
image: blood in the air--battle in a nice place--heaven? Dying?
fear of death--government
death is approaching slowly closing in --sucking the life out--no
hope
fearful death
people are seeing it in the fields--country
empty no food no people --war & poverty, famine, recession
the end is coming
enemy burning everything
everything is burning...METAPHOR
Hr 3 Start Paraphrase
At the moment that the proud parade arrived at the final road
curves, recall , movers, the booming in the sky...At the moment
that chuckling, snapped in half, dangles shaking in the mouth,
recall, movers, the flashing far in the distance.
The scent of hemoglobin now hovers in the purple cloud of
midday. The execution order hides waiting beside the hallways of
strength; and a massive ominous object begins to pull at the cord
of the spacious oxygen, a space cloud gigantic and infinite, a
darkness of not shallow H2O--a metal imagined idea unknown
and unwritten, a trail of rock.
The sleepy crania of the seed shells in lifeless fields see it, the
farm shelters left behind in the last hundred year's grass infernos
see it: the large cornea arrays of