Summary of The Second Coming
Summary of The Second Coming
Summary of The Second Coming
The literary analysis shows that Yeats has skillfully used some literary devices
to discuss the reason why the world is going astray. The effective use of these
devices and clarity of subject matter have made the poem thoughtful for the
readers.
1. Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of some lines. There are only two
stanzas in this poem.
2. Rhyme Scheme: The poem follows ABBA CDDC throughout the poem
with iambic pentameter.
3. Iambic Pentameter: It is a type of meter consisting of five iambs. This
poem comprises iambic pentameter For Example, “Turning
and turning in the widening gyre.”
Quotes to be Used
These lines can be used in a speech to describe the present condition of the
world. They also could be used to express a personal point of view about the
mismanagement and malfunctioning of the center of the world, which has
allowed the worse to prevail.
Yet for all its metaphorical complexity, “The Second Coming” actually has a relatively
simple message: it basically predicts that time is up for humanity, and that civilization as
we know it is about to be undone. Yeats wrote this poem right after World War I, a
global catastrophe that killed millions of people. Perhaps it’s unsurprising, then, that the
poem paints a bleak picture of humanity, suggesting that civilization’s sense of progress
and order is only an illusion.
With the above in mind, the first stanza’s challenging imagery starts to make more
sense. The “falconer,” representing humanity’s attempt to control its world, has lost its
“falcon” in the turning “gyre” (the gyre is an image Yeats uses to symbolize grand,
sweeping historical movements as a kind of spiral). These first lines could also suggest
how the modern world has distanced people from nature (represented here by the
falcon). In any case, it’s clear that whatever connection once linked the metaphorical
falcon and falconer has broken, and now the human world is spiraling into chaos.
Indeed, the poem suggests that though humanity might have looked like it was making
progress over the past “twenty centuries”—via seemingly ever-increasing knowledge
and scientific developments, for example—the First World War proved people to be as
capable of self-destruction as ever. “Anarchy” was “loosed upon the world,” along with
tides of blood (which clearly evoke the mass death of war). “Innocence” was just a
“ceremony,” now “drowned.” The “best” people lack “conviction,” which suggests they're
not bothering to do anything about this nightmarish reality, while the “worst” people
seem excited and eager for destruction. The current state of the world, according to the
speaker, proves that the "centre"—that is, the foundation of society—was never very
strong.
In other words, humanity’s supposed arc of progress has been an illusion. Whether the
poem means that humanity has lost its way or never knew it to begin with is unclear, but
either way the promises of modern society—of safety, security, and human dignity—
have proven empty. And in their place, a horrific creature has emerged—a grotesque
perversion of the “Second Coming” promised by Christianity, during which Jesus Christ
is supposed to return to the earth and invite true believers to heaven. This Second
Coming is clearly not Jesus, but instead a “rough beast” that humanity itself has woken
up (perhaps, the first stanza implies, by the incessant noise of its many wars).
With this final image of the beast, the poem indicates that while humanity seemed to get
more civilized in the 2,000 years that followed Christ's birth, in reality people have been
sowing the seeds of their own destruction all along. This “rough beast” is now “pitilessly”
slouching toward the birthplace of Jesus—likely in order to usher in a new age of
“darkness” and “nightmare.”
“The Second Coming” offers an unsettling take on Christian morality, suggesting that it
is not the stable and reliable force that people believe it to be. The poem
clearly alludes to the biblical Book of Revelation from the start, in which, put simply,
Jesus returns to Earth to save the worthy. According to the Bible, this is meant to
happen when humanity reaches the end times: an era of complete war, famine,
destruction and hatred. The poem suggests that the end times are already happening,
because humanity has lost all sense of morality—and perhaps that this morality was
only an illusion to begin with.
In the first stanza, the speaker describes the chaos, confusion, and moral weakness
that have caused “things” to “fall apart.” In the second, the poem makes it clear that it’s
a specifically Christian morality that is being undone. In describing this wide-ranging
destruction, the poem asks whether Christian morality was built on weak foundations in
the first place—that is, perhaps humanity was never really moral, but just pretended to
be.
The first stanza's imagery develops this sense of morality being turned upside down:
good and evil (the "best" and "worst") are no longer the reliable categories that they
once were, replaced by “mere anarchy” (“mere” means something like “pure” here).
Humanity has drenched itself in blood—the “blood-dimmed tide”—suggesting that
morality was only ever a “ceremony,” a performance that conjured the illusion that
humankind was "innocent."
What's more, the poem suggests that no one—not even Jesus—can remedy this bleak
reality. The biblical Book of Revelation predicts a kind of final reckoning in which people
essentially get what they deserve based on their moral behavior and religious virtues; it
indicates that Jesus will come to save those who are worthy of being saved. But “The
Second Coming” offers no such comfort.
Instead, in the first line of the second stanza the poem hints that a moment of divine
intervention must be at hand after the chaos of the first stanza ("surely some revelation
is at hand"). And, as it turns out, "some revelation" is at hand. But rather than returning
the world to peace, this new revelation makes things worse: a new and grotesque beast
heads toward Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, to be brought into the world. If Jesus
was the figurehead for a moral movement, this new beastly leader is the figurehead of a
new world of “anarchy,” in which the “best” people (likely the most moral people) lack
the courage of their convictions and the “worst” are allowed to thrive. In other words, the
poem portrays Christian morality and prophecy as weak, or even proven false, in the
face of the violence and destruction that humans have created.
The “blank gaze” of this new creature provides further evidence of just how hopeless
the situation is. This being might have the head of a “man,” but it doesn’t have moral
sense—instead, it is “pitiless.” It is arriving to preside over “blood-dimmed tide[s]” and
“drowned’ “innocence”—not a world of kindness, charity, and justice. Its sphinx-like
appearance is also deliberately at odds with Christian imagery, which further suggests a
break with Christian morality. Meanwhile, the “Spiritus Mundi” mentioned by the poem is
what Yeats thought of as the world’s collective unconscious, from which the poet could
draw insight. This vision of the beast, then, is suggestive of a worldwide shift into
“anarchy,” as the collective mind of humanity lets go of morality.
“The Second Coming” is a deeply ambiguous poem. Indeed, Yeats revised specific
cultural references out of the poem before its publication. But there’s no mistaking that
this is a bleak vision of the future of humankind, one which presents morality as a kind
of collective dream that is now turning into a nightmare.
Yeats places the falcon front and center in the opening lines of the poem to represent
humanity's control over the world. The fact that the falcon "cannot hear" its master thus
symbolizes a loss of that control.
To understand this symbol better, it's important to know a little bit about falconry more
generally. Falconry is a practice that goes back thousands of years, and involves people
training birds of prey to follow instructions. This was often for hunting purposes, but is
also practiced as a kind of art form. In both instances, the falcon represents humanity
exerting a type of intelligent control over the natural world. Killer birds like hawks and
falcons are brought under the spell of humans.
The falcon's inability to hear the falconer's call (lines 1 and 2) means that the
relationship between them has been severed. This symbolizes chaos and confusion,
and specifically gestures towards a breakdown in communication.
The latter of these is especially interesting when considered in the context of World War
I. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which triggered the events that
led to global conflict, is thought to have been partly due to his motorcade taking a wrong
turn—because the driver had not been given the correct instruction.
The Beast
In lines 11 to 18, the speaker has a vision of a beast. Though the speaker doesn't name
the beast specifically, it is described in vivid and unsettling detail. The beast has a "lion
body" and the "head of a man." This makes it similar to a sphinx or a manticore, both of
which were mythical creatures said to be predatory towards humans. This type of hybrid
creature is quite common in various mythologies, and is meant to convey a kind of
freakishness, a sense of nature somehow going wrong.
With its animal body and human head, perhaps this beast says something about the
"nightmare" to come. Though humans have tried to civilize themselves and improve
their world, perhaps their more beastly animal nature has only been hidden—not
defeated.
In other words, the beast might symbolize that civilization itself is a kind of illusion. The
human head has a "gaze" that lacks empathy, suggesting that the beast is ready to kill.
Given that the poem was written between the two world wars of the 20th century, this
surreal image seems to gesture towards humankind's ever-improving capacity for self-
destruction.
GYRE IN SECOND COMING: