An excursion into the title of yesterday’s posting “Things fall apart”, a wry tale of the misfortunes of daily life, with the following moment, in which a can opener literally falls apart, as its comedic center:
Can openers are difficult for me to operate. But I wrestled with it, and had gotten the can half open when the opener sprung apart, spraying gears and handles and other parts all over the kitchen counter. I then discovered that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again; the can opener had turned into a useless pile of metal and plastic trash.
My title has a distinguished pedigree, in this poetic line from William Butler Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Which then provided the title of the stunning 1958 novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
