Things Fall Apart Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, When Chinua Achebe was writing the book, Things Fall Apart, he had just read and thought about the poem written by William Butler Yeats. The book has many similar qualities and many of the things in the book symbolize objects in the poem. For example, the tribe becoming farther apart and widening of ideas is like the first line of the poem. Or Okonkwo’s son leaving him to convert is like the second line. Out of the third line comes the title of Chinua’s book and the clan and life altogether for