William Butler
Yeats wrote The Second Coming to describe the current state of
society at the beginning of the 1920s, shortly after World War I
came to an end. Yeats believed that even though the war had ended,
many people were too broken to recover. He believed that this was
not just the end of a war, but the beginning of future violence
that was looming. Yeats uses symbolism, figurative language, and
structure to illustrate the complete disarray of society after
World War I.
Throughout the whole poem, the symbolism makes the story dark
and warning-like. The first stanza describes the state of society
post-war and pre-Second Coming, when Yeats states Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, / and
everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned (4-6). The
symbolism in these lines shows that the state of the world is in
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Repetition in
the poem, as represented in the first line Turning and turning in
the widening gyre (1), shows that people are stuck doing the same
thing over and over. History is bound to repeat itself if society
is stuck in their old ways, foreshadowing that one day there will
be another war, also known as
the
Second Coming. The simile a gaze blank and pitiless as the
sun (15) shows that there is no life left in society after the war
drained them of their happiness. Yeats also uses irony to show that
there is no way to tell who the good people and the bad people are
anymore because The best lack all conviction, while the worst /
Are full of passionate intensity (7-8). The best lacking
conviction shows that the ones who should be deemed as good are
defeated. They have no more fight left in them after fighting for
so long, while the worst are full of an intensity that questions
the ethics and morality of society. Things have gotten so bad after
the war that good and bad are nonexistent
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