“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold” is a quote from the Yeats poem “The second coming” where one can have various different connotations. Elyn Saks used this quote as the title of her book because both, the quote in the poem and in the book refers to something falling apart. In Yates interpretation of “the center cannot hold” he describes it as a situation where everything is out of control, a place where you cannot feel safe anymore because the “center” which holds everything together can no longer hold the weight and collapses whereby everything falls apart.

In the first stanza Yeats expresses his concerns about the social wrongs of modernity and the rupture of traditional structures. “The feeling that the old rules no longer apply and there’s nothing to replace them” (Tabor 2015). These fears can be rediscovered in Saks fight against schizophrenia, though Saks might define “the center” slightly different than Yeats did. In her book, the main character Elyn is considered as being very close to her family, so much so that they can be seen as her “center”. They have a good impact on her but her disease seems to be stronger than the power of their family ties.

“Consciousness gradually loses its coherence. One’s center gives way. The center cannot hold. The “me” becomes a haze, and the solid center from which one experiences reality breaks up like a bad radio signal”(Saks 2007).

Schizophrenia is the reason why she more and more looses touch with her family as they could not understand what was going in her mind. Her family, being the center of her life, cannot hold and protect her any longer, she has to face her fears herself.

What distinguishes these two writings, is the run of events. The title of the poem “The Second Coming” is a metaphor which already points out what is going to happen. Starting with a miserable situation, the poem turns more positive in the second stanza. In Saks’s book it turns the other way around, because family ties get torn by something supernatural – schizophrenia.

Works Cited

Saks, Elyn. The Center Cannot Hold. 2007

Tabor, Nick. No Slouch. The Paris Review. 7 April 2015. Web. 25 September 2015. <www.theparisreview.org>.

Yeats, W.B. The Second Coming. Poetry Foundation. Web. 24 September 2015. <www.poetryfoundation.org>