William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” Journal Observation In his blank verse poem “The Second Coming,” Irish poet William Butler Yeats describes the turmoil and darkness surrounding the lives of people on earth before the second coming of Christ. One way that Yeats communicates the spiritual darkness in the last generation is by using a metaphor. Yeats writes “darkness drops again…twenty centuries of stony sleep” (Yeats 1028). By describing the last generation before the coming of Christ as in a “stony sleep,” Yeats communicates the idea that the people lack awareness to the reality of the soon coming of Christ and remain indifferent to Him. Also, Yeats uses the lion to allude to the Bible’s description of God as the “Lion of Judah.” Thus, the Lion in the poem represents God returning as a righteous judge at the second coming to take His people with Him and judge the unrepentant. Interpretation In his poem “The Second Coming,” Yeats’ words serve to warn people of the dangers of falling spiritually asleep. As the violence causes “things [to] fall apart” all around them, people continue following their own evil paths with “passionate intensity” (Yeats 1028). However, they suddenly realize that they “lack all conviction” by failing to accept God’s salvation through the message displayed in Bethlehem (Yeats 1028). Since the people remained spiritually asleep, they become suddenly awakened and “vexed to [a] nightmare by a rocking cradle” (Yeats 1028), when Christ returns and they are found unprepared. Because they failed to accept Christ when they still had time, the second coming appears suddenly upon them and their hopes for salvation are lost as the lion comes to judge the world. By sharing the terrifying reality of the generation in “stony sleep” before God’s second coming, Yeats tells his audience their need to remain prepared for God’s return. Integration In Mathew 24:42-44, Jesus gives the warning “Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man
In “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”, Thomas describes men as wise, good, wild, and grave, and displays their perspective about death. For wise men, “because their words had forked no lightning, they / do not go gentle into that good night” (5-6). The metaphor in the line reflects wise men’s regret in life as their words, the ability of intelligent people, forked no lightning, meaning they did not leave any significant marks in history before dying. Therefore as good night, a metaphor for death, approaches, wise men resist dying to satisfy their discontent, and all other men convey similar perspectives. However, since night will come anyways, Thomas know men cannot escape death, so he agonizes for his incompetence in saving his father. Comparably in “One Art,” Bishop claims “so many things seemed filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster” (2-3). The disappeared objects metaphorize Bishop’s loss of precious memory fragment, such as losing the mothers’ watch representing the farewell with her mother. At first, Bishop expresses she is fine with things vanishing. Yet overtime, the materials grow more substantial, and ultimately, when Bishop separates with her beloved, she notes “it may look like (Write it!) a disaster” (19), mentioning loss is indeed a disaster. She knows the farewell was
In Chapter 2 of Encountering the New Testament the author talks about a few of the different practices that unified the Jews as well the different religious groups that had different beliefs. Judaism was unified in the beliefs that they had been chosen by God, they were waiting for the messiah to come, they respect the synagogues, they shared the same laws and traditions of elder. Although these beliefs were unifying there were seperate religious groups and leaders that held different beliefs. Probably the most well known group of religious leaders were the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a small group of religious leaders that believed in God, and the coming messiah. Although many of the Pharisees did live good lives many of them were
This essay will argue that the eschatology of the Book of Revelation forms an integral part of John’s attempt within the pages of his book to form a literary world in which the forms, figures, and forces of the earthly realm are critiqued and unmasked through the re-focalization of existence from the perspective of heaven. It will attempt to show that, in response to the social, political, religious, and economic circumstances of his readers, the Book of Revelation forms a counter imaginative reality. Through drawing upon an inaugurated sense of eschatology and evocative imagery, John is able to pull the reader in and show them the true face of the imperial world and consequences of its ideology, forcing the reader allegiance to fall
We can be more specific and see what the poet and writer exactly talk about. It is better to focus on the poem first as it was written before the novel. In his poem William butler Yeats is shocked by the events which were happening during the First World War. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned…”, he tries to picture the dark ages of the war and the nasty events which were happening by using some metaphors and similes such as “a shape with lion body and the head of man” or “shadows of the indignant desert birds” Therefore, he manage to transmit the terrifying atmosphere of his time to the reader. He can not stand this state of fairs so he thinks that it is the end and he hopes that it is time for the second coming of Christ.
The “lion body and the head of a man” and “the rocking cradle” in “The Second Coming” symbolize
Slouching Toward Bethlehem took ideas from WB Yeats Poem “The Second Coming” where both pieces of writing for inspired by the following of wars. In “the second Coming”
The second stanza is addressed to ‘wise men’ who know they cannot hide from death and it’s inevitability. Poetic techniques used in this stanza are metaphors, rhyme, symbols and repetition. The line “words had forked no lightning” is a metaphor because words cannot actually fork lightning. This line suggests that the men hadn’t made an impact on the world, nor accomplished all they wanted to in life. Rhyming is also a technique used in every line, ‘right’ and ‘night’ are rhyming words used, and ‘they’ in the second line rhymes with ‘day’ in the previous stanza. So ‘night’, ‘light’ and ‘right’ rhyme, and ‘day’ and ‘they’ rhyme, hence the ABA ABA rhyming pattern. The third poetic device used in the second stanza is symbolism of ‘dark’ in the first line, which represents death. Repetition of “do not go gentle into that good night” is repeated every second stanza as the ending line, ‘night’ in the final line also symbolises death.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats have been considered literary classics. Although there may be a gap between the times of publication, the themes and connotations are strikingly similar. In both works, there is a progression of chaos in time caused by change and eventually leads to an end.
In the poem “The Waking”, written by Theodore Roethke, the use of symbolism accentuates the unavoidable presence of death and its relativity in the case of being interchangeable with life. The speaker stresses that one’s existence is never ending and death is only the bridge between this life and the next. By “[waking] to sleep”, the speaker substitutes abstract concepts such as living and death with “waking” and “sleeping”, respectively. The use of symbolism signifies the difficult interrelations between life and death, which justifies symbols as a way of understanding difficult concepts. In addition, the speaker states that “ [he wakes] to sleep, and take[s] [his] waking slow” as another way of saying that his life’s purpose is to die in
The Second Coming", which was written by William Butler Yeats, is being linked to World War 1, which Yeats lived through and experienced. This poem is filled with very descriptive examples and effects due to the war, and the overriding tone of this has been set to a dark and gloomy poem. Most people would think that Yeats is talking about the return of Jesus Christ, but actually, he is portraying his world as being encumbered by destruction and chaos. He is afraid that the world will never get any better and that we will soon just end up destroying ourselves.
put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. I
To start this off, I don’t know much about the New Testament but I can name a few specifics. For instance, the first four books of the New Testament are all the same story just different perspectives. I know that the book of Revelation is a story of the end of times, written by John. However, Jesus was speaking through John, as he wrote the book. I know that Jesus was born of a virgin, named Mary. Jesus, before his time, had performed his first miracle of turning water into wine. By the age of thirteen, John the Baptist had baptized him. From that moment on, Jesus was now the man he was called to be, our Savior. I know that Jesus traveled through the Middle East, to more place than we know, performing miracles, such as, healing a leper, making
Further into the last part of the poem, it reveals an elaborate metaphor where Senghor references his Christianity and the symbol of Jesus’ suffering on the cross, “The reconciliation of Lion
William Butler Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” after World War 1 ended, in a time when the image of society was catastrophic. Yeats was deeply affected by these horrors caused by the war. Yeats predicts this image of a catastrophic society due to war will reappear in the near future. In “The Second Coming”, William B. Yeats uses a variety of literary devices to portray his idea of what the downfall of society will look like.
The Apocalypse on earth has started, The Anti-Christ a beast of half-human, half animal is rising, to earth and the world is being pulled into the darkness of hell through the gyre. This poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats is about revelations. Yeats Uses language and syntax, and a new form of writing, and literary devices, to the point of view of the narrator, and form, and context. That results in showing that Yeats, was struggling to understand Christianity from his life to his upbringing, that led him longing to understand religion. From, Yeats father teaching him to look at the world through art and poetry that led Yeats to explore the supernatural and many other forms of religion, that left Yeats to become deeply involved in politics that left him struggling to understand Christianity as he does throughout "The Second Coming."