12th Grade Summer Reading Packet: Things Fall Apart
You are expected to do the following:
1. Before you read Things Fall Apart, read Chinua Achebe’s biography at http://www.biography.com/people/chinua-achebe20617665#awesm=~oEpFzwkgPZlE7A.
2. Read the “Context of Things Fall Apart.” Annotate the text with your thoughts, opinions, questions, etc.
3. Read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It’s in your best interest to purchase the book and annotate the text with your
thoughts, opinions, questions, etc. However, you can also read the novel at
http://www.skitsap.wednet.edu/cms/lib/WA01000495/Centricity/ModuleInstance/10511/Things%20Fall%20Apart%20ebook.p
df.
4. Use the first character chart as a guide while you read. For the second character chart, fill in the necessary details for each
listed character. For the blank ones, identify four more characters from the novel and their necessary details.
5. The title of the text is an allusion to the W.B. Yeat’s poem “The Second Coming.” Read the poem “The Second Coming” and
fill in the TPCASTT chart. Follow the instructions in the first column. Be thoroughly detailed with your analysis. This chart
is a useful tool when analyzing poetry.
6. Type a two-chunk constructed response on the relationship between the novel, Things Fall Apart, and the poem, “The Second
Coming.” (TS, CD1, CM1, CM1, CD2, CM2, CM2, CS)
7. Answer the discussion questions with typed two-chunk constructed responses for each question.
8. All items listed above will be due on the first day of class for the 2014/2015 school year. This will be graded as a major
assignment.
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Context of Things Fall Apart
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930, in Ogidi, a large village in Nigeria. Although he was the child of a Protestant
missionary and received his early education in English, his upbringing was multicultural, as the inhabitants of Ogidi still lived according to many
aspects of traditional Igbo (formerly written as Ibo) culture. Achebe attended the Government College in Umuahia from 1944 to 1947. He
graduated from University College, Ibadan, in 1953. While he was in college, Achebe studied history and theology. He also developed his interest
in indigenous Nigerian cultures, and he rejected his Christian name, Albert, for his indigenous one, Chinua.
In the 1950s, Achebe was one of the founders of a Nigerian literary movement that drew upon the traditional oral culture of its indigenous peoples.
In 1959, he published Things Fall Apart as a response to novels, such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, that treat Africa as a primordial and
cultureless foil for Europe. Tired of reading white men’s accounts of how primitive, socially backward, and, most important, language-less native
Africans were, Achebe sought to convey a fuller understanding of one African culture and, in so doing, give voice to an underrepresented and
exploited colonial subject.
Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s and portrays the clash between Nigeria’s white colonial government and the traditional culture of the
indigenous Igbo people. Achebe’s novel shatters the stereotypical European portraits of native Africans. He is careful to portray the complex,
advanced social institutions and artistic traditions of Igbo culture prior to its contact with Europeans. Yet he is just as careful not to stereotype the
Europeans; he offers varying depictions of the white man, such as the mostly benevolent Mr. Brown, the zealous Reverend Smith, and the
ruthlessly calculating District Commissioner.
Achebe’s education in English and exposure to European customs have allowed him to capture both the European and the African perspectives on
colonial expansion, religion, race, and culture. His decision to write Things Fall Apart in English is an important one. Achebe wanted this novel to
respond to earlier colonial accounts of Africa; his choice of language was thus political. Unlike some later African authors who chose to revitalize
native languages as a form of resistance to colonial culture, Achebe wanted to achieve cultural revitalization within and through English.
Nevertheless, he manages to capture the rhythm of the Igbo language and he integrates Igbo vocabulary into the narrative.
Achebe has become renowned throughout the world as a father of modern African literature, essayist, and professor of English literature at Bard
College in New York. But Achebe’s achievements are most concretely reflected by his prominence in Nigeria’s academic culture and in its literary
and political institutions. He worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Company for over a decade and later became an English professor at the
University of Nigeria. He has also been quite influential in the publication of new Nigerian writers. In 1967, he co-founded a publishing company
with a Nigerian poet named Christopher Okigbo and in 1971, he began editing Okike, a respected journal of Nigerian writing. In 1984, he founded
Uwa ndi Igbo, a bilingual magazine containing a great deal of information about Igbo culture. He has been active in Nigerian politics since the
1960s, and many of his novels address the post-colonial social and political problems that Nigeria still faces. --Sparknotes
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Mr. Brown
Mr. Smith
District
Commissioner
Okonkwo
(Protagonist)
Kotma
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The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
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?
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TPCASTT Template for “The Second Coming”
TPCASTT: Poem Analysis Method: Title, Paraphrase, Connotation, Attitude, Shift(s), Title Revisited and Theme
Title: Before you even think about reading
the poetry or trying to analyze it, speculate
on what you think the poem might be about
based upon the title. Often times, authors
conceal meaning and give clues in the title.
Jot down what you think this poem will be
about…
Paraphrase: Before you begin thinking
about meaning or trying to analyze the
poem, don't overlook the literal meaning of
the poem. One of the biggest problems that
students often make
in poetry analysis is jumping to conclusions
before understanding what is taking place in
the poem. When you paraphrase a poem,
write in your own words exactly what
happens in the poem. Look at the number of
sentences in the poem—your paraphrase
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should have exactly the same number. This
technique is especially helpful for poems
written in the 17th and 19th centuries.
Sometimes your teacher may allow you to
summarize what happens in the poem. Make
sure that you understand the difference
between a paraphrase and a summary.
Connotation: Although this term usually
refers solely to the emotional overtones of
word choice, for
this approach the term refers to any and all
poetic devices, focusing on how such
devices contribute to the meaning, the
effect, or both, of a poem. You may
consider imagery, figures of speech (simile,
metaphor, personification, symbolism, etc),
diction, point of view, and sound devices
(alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and
rhyme). It is not necessary that you identify
all the poetic devices within the poem. The
ones you do identify should be seen as a
way of supporting the conclusions you are
going to draw about the poem.
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Attitude: Having examined the poem's
devices and clues closely, you are now
ready to explore the multiple attitudes that
may be present in the poem. Examination of
diction, images, and details suggests the
speaker's attitude and contributes to
understanding. Remember that usually the
tone or attitude cannot be named with a
single word Think complexity.
Shift: Rarely does a poem begin and end
the poetic experience in the same place. As
is true
of most of us, the poet's understanding of an
experience is a gradual realization, and the
poem is a reflection of that understanding or
insight. Watch for the following keys to
shifts:
• key words, (but, yet, however, although)
• punctuation (dashes, periods, colons,
ellipsis)
• stanza divisions
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• changes in line or stanza length or both
• irony
• changes in sound that may indicate
changes in meaning
• changes in diction
Title Revisited: Now look at the title again,
but this time on an interpretive level. What
new insight does the title provide in
understanding the poem.
Theme: What is the poem saying about the
human experience, motivation, or
condition? What subject or subjects does the
poem address? What do you learn about
those subjects? What idea does the poet
want you take away with you concerning
these subjects? Remember that the theme of
any work of literature is stated in a complete
sentence.
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Discussion Questions: (Answer once you have completed the entire text)
1. Explain how mutually supportive interaction between women is represented in the story. Why is it necessary for the women to
stick together in this society? Identify at least three examples from the text.
2. What’s the importance of Igbo folklore?
3. Identify at least three examples from the text that support that the Igbo society is quite sophisticated.
4. Explain how important kinship is in the functioning of the society. Do you have a word for kinship in your own native
language? Explain the importance of the word and concept in your culture.
5. How have the Europeans managed to “divide and conquer”?
6. What does the conversation between Mr. Brown and Akunna reveal about one’s religion?
7. Explain how Mr. Smith functions as a foil for Mr. Brown.
8. In your opinion, which is a more suitable form of thinking: collective/tribal or individualistic? Explain.
9. What aspects prove that Okonkwo is unchanged (static) from start to finish?
10. What’s the significance of the ending of the novel?
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