The Second Coming: Analysis
“Turning
and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer” (Yeats
lines 1-2).
Starting right with the first two lines of the poem the correct use of language
by the author is used to evoke such fantastic scenes. The poem “The
Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats is full of vibrant imagery. The author
uses a dark tone with effective vocabulary to produce such vivid imagery. Each line
of the poem is so short but creates such epic scenes in the mind. The imagery
in this poem creates a scene of chaos with this dark supernatural beast
descending on the world. What does this poem mean though? What is this beast? “The
Second Coming” is difficult to analyze just because it can be interpreted in so
many ways. This poem describes a gyre which is a symbol for war and goes on to
describe a beast which is the signal of a new age. Change is an inevitable result
of war.
When reading the poem “The Second
Coming” the eerie imagery the words create is amazing. For example look at the first two
lines, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the
falconer” (Yeats lines 1-2). With this line I imagine a tornado forming,
swirling in circles and sucking in the air and clouds around it. This vortex
being described must be deafening. The attention of all the
people and animals must be on this unexplained event for even a falcon is
prevented from hearing its owner. The gyre is a symbol for war. The author uses
the word widening so this means more and more is being affected by the war.
Destruction is described in the next lines of the poem,
it reads, “Things are falling apart; the centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world” (Yeats 3-4). The centre is the past stability of
institutions, beliefs, and policies. These things will change as a result of
war. Eventually everything will fall because things fall apart. This war is
affecting everything and will consume everything. The author uses the word mere
which suggests that the only result from this war is chaos and destruction.
The next two lines in the poem “The Second Coming” reads;
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is
drowned” (Yeats lines 5-6). The tide is a symbol of the people dying. The tide
will flow over the land; unleashed by the gyre. The people’s innocence is not celebrated
anymore. As a result of this tide released from the gyre, the innocence is swept
away from the people with the arrival of the dying. The people innocence is
gone because it drowned. There is no more innocent because the war took it away.
In the next lines reads, “The best lack all conviction,
while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity” (Yeats lines 7-8). With this
anarchy this war has started there are various people on the different sides. First
at the one extreme there are the people who lack all conviction that means they
don’t believe in the war that is occurring. They are probably were just trying
to survive through it. On the other side are the people who believe the war is
just because they are the ones full of passionate intensity. Notice the poem mentions
the best and the worst. It seems the writer has taken sides in this conflict. He
lacks conviction as well for he makes the assumption that the best people are the
ones lacking judgment that this is the right course of action: he doesn’t believe
war is justified.
The next lines of the poem describe a beast and a Second
Coming. What is the "rough beast"? What is coming? An
event like this was obviously expected because the poem reads “Surely some
revelation is at hand/ Surely the Second Coming is at hand” (Yeats lines 9-10).
What else could it be? This is the only explanation. The author sounds
like he is trying to argue out loud with himself. Later on the author
becomes more convinced that this new era is here to stay because the poem says,
“The darkness drops again but now I know” (Yeats line 18). The second to last
line says, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last” (Yeats line 21). It
came at last. Maybe the purpose of this poem is to say that this beast could appear
at any time. The author must have known that this was going to happen
because at first he was surprised and was not completely sure what was
happening. Later on in the poem it feels like he had known this change was
about to happen.
William
Yeats goes on and writes that this beast described in the poem has been in a
sleep, “That twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a
rocking cradle” (lines 19-20). Now these lines are interesting. The beast has
been waiting to emerge from sleep for the past two thousand years up till now. While
sleeping peacefully the beast has been provoked into a nightmare by the
fighting civilizations. Rocking refers to the fighting of the countries over
the years. Cradle refers to the earth the beast was sleeping in under where all
of humanity has lived. Humanity has been fighting each other and at war which
has disturbed the sleep of this beast enough to awaken it.
Now
the last line reads “Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” (Yeats line 22).
This means that this war is igniting a big change and it is only just started
with this beast because the beast has not even been born yet. There is a
question mark at the end of this last line so it means the author isn’t exactly
sure what this beast will do. The beast is a signal of the beginning of a new
era.
Works Cited
Yeats,
William Butler. "The Second Coming." PotW.org -
Poem of the Week. 18 September
2011. Web. <http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html>.
