22 July 2012
widening gyre
This is something I was talking to my friend about and I thought it was really interesting. She pointed out the idea of the widening gyre. The first time I read the poem, I had no idea what a gyre was but after looking it up, I learned it was a circle or ring. I thought it was really interesting how this went with the book because after looking closely, there are several things that go in circles. For example, every year they plant the crops, harvest them, the have the festival where they eat the new crops. This repeats every year like a cycle. The wrestling tournament also happens at the same time every year as well as the cycle with getting married and having a kid, then they grow up and get married themselves. I found this parallel with the poem very interesting.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I thought that this was very interesting also. Another cycle I saw was how the sons don't respect their fathers. Nwoye doesn't respect Okonkwo, just as Okonkwo didn't respect Unoka.
I like how you connected the two cycles from the poem and the novel, but you also said how a gyre can mean ring as well. When I read the poem and story I kept thinking how the falcon kept widening is search, only because it could not find its falconer. When I read that I think of how the falcon and the characters in the novel only felt comfortable traveling so far. The people in Oknokwo's village would only travel to relatively close villages, because of that the villages divided themselves into separate “rings” or areas so when the Europeans came, because the different villages where so divides from one another they could not work together to keep the Europeans out. So things fell apart.
If you look into Yeats, you'll get an even better understanding of what he thought of with gyres. You're right about it being a cycle of things, though.
I didn't realize that a gyre was a cycle. That's interesting, I wonder, then, why he would call it a widening gyre. Maybe because more time has passed and still continues to cycle,showing the eternal quality of the cycles of the world and of life. If that's what it means then it almost contrasts with the book, because the cycles of the tribe are actually coming to an end.
That is very interesting, I didnt realize that connection. It all makes since now, everything in the novel went in a circle, or a cycle. And I wonder if its called a widening gyre because the cycle of their life is widening and opening to new things. Like the missionaries, and new ways of life.
Post a Comment