The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats Essay Example

Introduction

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again, but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

The poem The Second Coming is a free-form, general lyric, 22- line poem, and two-stanza poem with loose iambic pentameter. It is a brief yet very informative and mind involving secular poem whose primary audience is any member of society who in one way or the other gets affected by the issues covered. The choice of vocabulary reflects the timelines through which this poem saw the light of day, with a phrase like "spiritus mundi" emerging from the dead Latin language, a language that during the early 20th century crowned an individual an intellect just by the mere use of it. He employs a lot of repetition and symbolism, all as an emphasis of the message and prophesies he wishes to pass across his audience, with the first symbol lying on the title of the poem. The second coming is a Christian analogy referring to the returning of the Messiah, and hence a restoration of world order and righteousness. It is a sign of a changing world initiated by the re-introduction of a powerful being, a similar message that Yeats carried in his poem. Whether from the biblical or secular point of view, there is always a belief, theory postulation or notion of the ending of one world and the commencement of a better, functional and ideal one after that. Hence the concepts of the end of the world, the judgment day to eliminate all sin and raise a righteous world, the Renaissance, the end of primitively and a medieval people and the rise of an intelligent race, and the repeated emphasis on the death of tyranny, corruption and inequality, and the rise of a better functioning and fair society. Yeats had a similar concept in mind; an anticipated change but wasn't as biblical as it was political. Having been through the World War I, and an impending national movement, his was a prediction of a spontaneous yet unavoidable change in course. In his poem, the second coming, it would seem like the awaiting of the return of the Messiah, but his artwork is about the roller-coaster that the political society was about to witness in terms of power possession and control.

Born in the mid-ninetieth century, Yeats grew up to witness some political, social, cultural and religious changes. His personal life was proof of this as he started as a lawyer, then dropped out to join a college specializing in art, and later dropped out to commence his poetic career. Soon after the publishing of his poem, the second coming, Yeats joined the political world to become a senator, maybe as an attempt to rescue an already sinking ship. He held two major personality blends; aestheticism, "a belief that art and beauty are important for everything" and atheism, a belief that their no god, and hence a satiric attribute towards his allegory of Bethlehem, a biblical city. "Yeats believed that history was cyclical (circular) and that every two thousand years a new cycle, which is the opposite of the cycle that has preceded it, begins" and hence his constant and consistent themes on a changing world(Encyclopedia of World Biography). This poem acted as a prophecy to a tyranny that was ahead, and a drastic change in the rule and form of society from a Christian to a barbaric one and this was partly if not wholly confirmed by the Nazi movement in Germany.

The anticipated political and societal transformation is tied to the loss of order as the first two lines commence with a state of disorder, disorientation, and chaos. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer" (Yeats, line 2) as it is "turning and turning in the widening gyre" (Yeats, line 1). A gyre according to the Merriam-Webster definition is a "circular or spiral motion or form especially a giant circular oceanic surface current." This goes in line with Yeats belief of a cyclic history. The Falcon in this scenario could be equated to a hawk, often a symbol of logic, while the falconer "the core of the moral sense, which binds people" (Khader, 31). Hence the turning and turning of the falcon into the gyre represent a conflicting interaction between logic and morals, and hence the beginning of a new phase of society. The imaginable flapping of wings as the falcon maneuvers through the gyre represents an inevitable collapse of morality and the emergence of a new normal which is immorality and moral confusion. It also symbolizes the end of the 2000-year Christian era and the beginning of a barbaric one, dominated by inhuman acts and cruelty. With such changes comes instability, and hence "Things fall apart" since "the center cannot hold." The newly acquired greed, barbarism, and injustice by man are gradually consuming him, and the result of this is that "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" (Yeats, line 4). Anarchy is a state of lawlessness or chaos due to the absence of governmental authority. The falcon is gradually proving unruly by the day, and the falconer cannot exercise any authority towards the former. Whatever follows this is blood-shed and radicalism.

The consequences of anarchy are a continuous flow of blood with an intensity of a tide (which is blood-dimmed). "The ceremony of innocence is drowned," (Yeats, line 6) and afterward, there is not an ounce to tell between the good and the bad in society. Those supposed to be better lack autonomy and a conviction, while those viewed to be "worst" actually possess a good quality of "passionate intensity." All these signs, like the epistemological signs of the end times, all point out to one fact; "Surely some revelation is at hand; / Surely the Second Coming is at hand (Yeats, line9-10)." The repetition and almost-duplication of the two lines finally introduce the audience to the logic behind all the previously mentioned happenings. The speaker seems to have a eureka-kind of a moment as he, as his audience put the pieces of evidence together in an attempt to explain the exact phenomenon that makes a falcon defiant to the authority, the establishment of anarchy, and the bloodshed. Yeats calls this a revelation, similar to the book of revelation in the bible that prophesies of the second coming of Jesus Christ to make things right. Suddenly, this second coming is conflicted by the speakers spiritus mundi (spirit of the world), and takes the audiences somewhere in a desert where he meets "A shape with lion body and the head of a man" (Yeats, line14) This is a sphinx, a mythical Egyptian creature that cannot register any humanness, or connections to the other beings, as perceived by its pitiless and blank gaze to the sun. It is not clear as to why the creature had to appear in line 14 of a 22-line poem, but linking it to the falcon turning into the gyre, this could be its new reappeared form. Its second coming. With its disconnection to the new world around it, as well as the desert birds, its reappearance causes these birds to be indignant or angry, seeing it as an injustice. The disconnection could also be a sign of human beings losing their connection to the nature they are expected to rule over, and hence become malicious and destructive to the very source of their survival and existence.

The social and political changes all point out to the falling of darkness, again, an indication that despite the constant adjustments, nothing better has emerged from this transformations. It is simply a replacement of one dark patch with another, and rocking the unsuspecting human beings into "twenty centuries of stony sleep." The rocking cradle could be a metaphoric representation of the social upheavals anticipated during and after the dark slumber. Twenty centuries are equated to an infant's single-night, and this proves the drag in the development of societies while its members are comfortable with their nightmares as long as the cradle keeps rocking. Violence, inhuman acts, and injustices are the rule of the day, as a sphinx that was previously described as pitiless, and hence harmless though inconsiderate, becomes a rough beast that "Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born" (Yeats, line 22) A symbolic look at the last two lines brings about two conflicting biblical analogies, the beast representing the signs of the end of the world, and Bethlehem, the city of birth of Jesus Christ. However, these might have nothing to do with the bible, and everything to do with the transformation of the beast from a spiritus mundi to a real phenomenon that could exist within people and affect them first hand.

The 20th-century society, the one that Yeats existed within, was facing a number of future threats, among them the World War II, the atomic bomb, the Hitler regime, fascism among many other threats that were awaiting this society. These were almost unavoidable fixes, and it was only a matter of time for them to be born and become real among the people. Therefore, the poem The Second Coming was in a way a warning while at the same time a prophecy of what was cooking for the world. It would also fit as a warning to the ignorant citizens who comfortably lay in their nightmares at a mere consolation of a present rather than wake up and see what the future holds. A century past the writing of the poem, and it still holds meaning to the 21st century. The beast was no doubt born and is living within societies, as cases of racism, social inequality, nuclear weaponry, global warming among many social issues dominate communities, states, nations, and continents. It could be about generational differences, and conflicts, with a preceding generation viewing its predecessor as outdated and irrelevant. Technology could be used in one of the many platforms where this conflict could manifest itself, and it could hypothetically be the beast born in the 21st century to disrupt the harmony between the boomers and the generation Y individuals.

Works Cited

Encyclopedia of world biography. William Butler Yeats biography. 2018. https://www.notablebiographies.com/We-Z/Yeats-William-Butler.html

Khader K. T. William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming" A Stylistic Analysis. IUG Journal of Humanities Research. Vol. 24, No1. 2016. Pp. 52-25.

Yeats W. B. The second coming, 1920. Lines 1-22