"The Second Coming": Our salvation or destruction?
When reading "The Second Coming" by Yeats, you might assume to read about the magnificent return of Christ to salvage his people. However, Yeats portrays a depressing world where chaos rules over man's innocence. The poem conveys a dark and ominous atmosphere that serves as a foreshadow to what may lie ahead for humankind if we keep on continuing down this path.
Yeats manipulates this piece of literature to show his standing on the world and its true paths: of science, social equality and diversity which are now in the early stages of demise. Conveyed in the first stanza, "mere anarchy is loosed upon this world" is a verse that shows the collapse of our society as we know it. He continues this with the details of a "blood-dimmed tide", that most certainly represent war ripping apart our civic domain. It is as though Yeats hopes to display to us that we are coming to an inevitable end to humanity as we have come to know.
Within the first stanza of the poem, Yeats focuses on the tragedies of the universe. The gyre symbolizes history, or the cycle of life of humanity. As the gyre turns and grows bigger and larger, all the while still keeping its initial shape, round, this means that even though things in our society and domain keep on improving, such as technology and government, human nature along with the lives we continue on living never do. History repeats itself, and we as a human race, never learn from our mistakes. The gyre also symbolizes a whirlwind, a cyclone that trembles our world. The falcon and his falconer, symbolize a follower and his trusty leader. As the falcon can no longer hear his falconer, it symbolizes that the followers no longer wish to oblige and abide by the leader any longer.
Within the second stanza we are presented to what is the second coming. However, it is not to be the Savior for our issues that we have created. Instead, he writes of a statue with a "blank and...