William Butler Yeats wrote his "The Second Coming" in January of 1919, three years after the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and after the First World War had ravaged Europe from 1914 until 1918. Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart, his first novel, in 1958, just two years prior to the establishment of an independent Nigerian state. These two seemingly unrelated pieces of literature are actually more related to each other than just the title. All of the horrors that occurred …showed first 75 words of 1144 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1144 total…directly to line 15 in "The Second Coming." The reader can see that Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart relates to William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming." The relationship is seen in a character basis when they read about Okonkwo; it presents itself in a larger sense when they understand the relationship of the colonial idea; and, in a wider sense, the relationship gives a deep feeling for Achebe's response to the European idea of "uncivilized" Africans.