Themes in The Second Coming

Themes in the poem “The Second Coming”
1. Civilization, Chaos and Control:

“The Second Coming” presents a nightmarish apocalyptic scenario, as the speaker describes human
beings’ increasing loss of control and tendency towards violence and anarchy.
“The Second Coming” actually has a 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.
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 lines also suggest how the modern world has distanced people from
nature (represented here by the falcon) and it’s clear that whatever connection between falcon and
falconer has broken, and now the human world is spiralling into chaos.
Indeed, the poem suggests that though humanity might have looked like it was making progress
over the past “twenty centuries” through ever-increasing knowledge and scientific developments,
the First World War proved people to be as capable of self-destruction as ever. The “best” people
lack “conviction,” 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. This Second Coming is clearly not Jesus, but instead a “rough
beast” that humanity itself has woken up 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.”
2. Mysticism and the Occult
Yeats had a deep fascination with mysticism and the occult, and his poetry is infused with a sense
of the otherworldly, the spiritual, and the unknown. Mysticism figures prominently in Yeats’s
discussion of the reincarnation of the soul, as well as in his philosophical model of the conical
gyres used to explain the journey of the soul, the passage of time, and the guiding hand of fate.
Mysticism and the occult occur again and again in Yeats’s poetry, most explicitly in “The Second
Coming” but also in poems such as “Sailing to Byzantium” and “The Magi” (1916). The rejection
of Christian principles in favor of a more supernatural approach to spirituality creates a unique
flavor in Yeats’s poetry that impacts his discussion of history, politics, and love.
3. The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History
Yeats’s devotion to mysticism led to the development of a unique spiritual and philosophical
system that emphasized the role of fate and historical determinism, or the belief that events have
been preordained. Yeats had rejected Christianity early in his life, but his lifelong study of
mythology, Theosophy, spiritualism, philosophy, and the occult demonstrate his profound interest
in the divine and how it interacts with humanity. Over the course of his life, he created a complex
system of spirituality, using the image of interlocking gyres (similar to spiral cones) to map out the
development and reincarnation of the soul. Yeats believed that history was determined by fate and
that fate revealed its plan in moments when the human and divine interact. A Tone of historically
determined inevitability permeates his poems, particularly in descriptions of situations of human
and divine interaction.

Themes in The Second Coming

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Themes in The Second Coming

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Themes in the poem “The Second Coming”

1. Civilization, Chaos and Control:

2. Mysticism and the Occult

3. The Impact of Fate and the Divine on History

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