The Second Coming by: William Butler Yeats

Setting

• Post World War I, around 1919
• Europe

Tone and Mood

Tone: Dark and pessimistic

Mood: Invokes a sense of social upheaval, which can make the readers feel frightened, pessimistic, ominous, or worried

Themes

Themes Continued

• Oder and Disorder: one of the main themes of the poem is a flood of disorder that drowns the existing one. This is symbolized by the falcon.
• Good Verse Evil: are good people still good if they don't act when they are faced with stressful chaos. Is there something awing about people who commit acts of evil, but that are full of passion even if it is for evil.

• Society and Class: Yeats embodies the structure of European society around the time of World War I, in the early 1900's

Symbols

• The Tide: Yeats uses the symbol of the tide to represent the drowning of innocence, and it also shows the destroying of hope which humanity needs.
• The Gyre: the gyre is a coil that continues to expand outward, Yeats uses it to symbolize the alternation between two cycles, the first being order and growth, the other is chaos and disorder.

Symbols Continued

The Gyre

• The Sphinx: Yeats uses the symbol of the sphinx as a prediction of the future of society , and how he views humanity.
• The Falcon: the falcon is used to show the theme of order and disorder. The falcon fly's away from its trainer, until it can no longer hear the trainer calling. This represents a loss of communication and a lack of control, which is one of the messages conveyed in the poem

Biblical Allusions

• The poem is filled with examples of biblical allusions, for example the title " The Second Coming" is an allusion to the reappearance of Christ as prophesied in the Book of Revelation
• Lines 4-6: is alluding to the biblical flood and tale of Noah and the Ark from Genesis
• Lines 13-14: the description of the sphinx in the desert refers to many themes in the Bible

Literary Devices

• Line 4: "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" is an example of oxymoron
• Line 15: "A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun" is an example of simile
• In lines 18-21: Yeats uses a metaphor for sleep. "The darkness drops again but now I know that twenty centuries of stoney sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,"

continued..

Form and Meter

• lived through the important time of the political rise and fall of Charles Stuart Parnell and the Irish Civil War
• devoted himself to Literary Revival and Irish Patriotism (most likely because of Maud)
• helped found Abbey Theatre
• 1923- won the Nobel Peace Price for Literature
• reached full potential in later years
• beat normal expectations- continued to thrive throughout his life
• regarded as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century

• The poem is written in blank verse, meaning that it has consistent meter, but no rhyme scheme.
• The stanzas do not rhyme
• It is written in rough iambic pentameter

Videos

Early life

• born in Dublin, 1865
• chaotic and artistic family
• moved to London when he was two and traveled between the city and County Sligo, Ireland
• began working at an early age
• first work published in 1885
• 1889, met Maud Gonne (revolutionary)
• fell madly in love with her but the feelings weren't returned
• later proposed to daughter, rejected once again
• returned to Dublin to study painting but learned he preferred poetry

The Second Coming by: William Butler Yeats

Laura Shukla & Olivia Paulson