rend asunder

“Emily Schossberger arrived on the Plains with little idea of what awaited her, limited knowledge of the expectations Boucher and the university had for her, and in no concept that in a few short weeks Japan would attack Pearl Harbor and rend asunder all normality as her adopted country then knew it,” the opening chapter of “Big House on the Prairie” reads.

Of course, the issue of Britain's European Union membership has always managed to rend asunder erstwhile political allies.

In his magnificent autobiography, Head-On, Julian Cope recounts one of the arguments that would rend asunder Liverpool's music heads in the 70s: whose version of the 1967 garage-rock staple Action Woman was better?

His features, solely known by the descriptions of those who penned his history, appear to us dimly through a gauzy veil of dreamland that we shall not try to rend asunder, for behind this mysterious filmy mask, the sacred lineaments will enjoy the rare and precious advantage of not having been spoilt, like so many others, by impossible attempts of pictorial reconstitution.

Rend asunder the chains which coward human cunning has bound around the sleeping power of your limbs!