Alexander Varela Varela 1
AP English IV
Ms. Cardenas
November 18, 2012
Our salvation or destruction??
In the poem the second coming written by William Yeats you might think that it is happy poem with the return of Christ to salvage his people. However, throughout the poem Yeats portrays a depressing world where chaos rules over man’s innocence. This poem conveys a dark and ominous atmosphere that foreshadow to what may lie ahead for humankind if we keep on continuing the direction that we are going.
In the first line of the poem” turn and turn in the widening gyre” (Yeats, pg. 1) is used as a figurative language. A gyre in oceanography is any large system of rotating ocean currents, particularly those involved with large wind movements. In this line he uses the phrase as a symbol for two occurring events which are the chaos of what is going on and the outcome which is the second coming of Jesus. In the second line “the falcon cannot hear the falconer” symbolizes all the destruction happening during that time which was during world war I. man did not have any control over it and cannot stop it or control by any means. He refers to things falling apart as a sign that the end was near as he saw it. Mean that all he saw where the evils happening at the time as he also said that “the center cannot hold” meaning that the world did not have control over the evil he saw.
He uses violent images to describe a world that is about to encounter a total destruction before the return of Jesus. This follows a traditional Christian belief that there would be a chaotic of events that would lead to the second coming of Jesus to the world.