MovieChat Forums > All Things Fall Apart (2011) Discussion > It's from a poem

It's from a poem

posted 13 years ago by travisdead1
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"Things Fall Apart", is both an allusion to and quote from the poem, "The Second Coming", by William Butler Yeats.

It's the 3rd line in the first stanza.

"turning and turning in a widening gyre,
the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Things fall apart.
The center cannot hold"

Though i have a strong inclination to post all of the poem, I'm resisting it. It is powerful and prophetic. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This specific poem is often alluded to in other media.

There is a great novel called "Things Fall Apart". We studied the poem "The Second Coming" and the novel in World Literature. Poem first. It is also powerful and worth reading.

This movie does not appear related to the book, save for the Yeats reference. The novel was set in a fictional village in Nigeria. It had nothing to do with football.

[–] hiphopsays 11 years ago

You are correct but alas 50 cent selected the title from listening to the Achebe reference from the Roots breakthrough album also titled Things Fall Apart. Even after folks around him noted Achebe's masterwork he decided he was already writing so he didn't want to read Achebe's novel as he thought it might heavily influence his own writing process (this would have been a benefit). 50 spoke about this at two film festivals during Q&A I attended and having seen the flick now I wish that he had read the novel.