Yeats and 'The Second Coming'

[layna]

hi, i'm new to this site. i'm currently studying yeats in a literature course and finding some of his works a bit hard to understand. But i like 'adams song', 'sailing to byzantium' and 'solomon to sheba'.
We are looking indepthly at the second coming atm and your infomation has been very useful thanks

[oshyjoshy]

The way i interpreted the first few lines of the poem was that Yeats' persona speaks about how broken our world and society has become. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer" symbolizes society breaking away from authority. The falcon is symbolic for society/humans and the falconer is sybolic for law and authority. We are given the image of a falcon flying far away from its master, no longer listening to its orders. This stands to show that in Yeats' mind, society is moving away from authority and no longer listening. When joined with line threes idea of anarchy being loosed upon the world, the idea makes sense. The use of the falcon (a bird) also emphasizes the destruction that the sphinx (beast with a lion body) can cause. Felines are natural predators of birds, the falcon is sybolic for humans therefore the sphinx is a natural predator of humans as well. Also the idea of a falcon being detached from its master emphasizes the fact that the sphinx is a complete connection of man and animal which is opposite to the brokeness of our world and society as said in lines 2-4, which almost acts as a prelude to the apocalypse that it will cause in order to create connectiveness once again.

[Darcy88]

I simply can't read this poem enough times. It haunts me. In a good and a bad way.