Topic 1: Main Idea of "The Second Coming"

The poem "The Second Coming" compares what most people think the second coming means to the way that Yeats sees the second coming as being. Other people seem to think that the second coming of Christ means that they will be saved from their sins, as well as from the depressing lives that they are faced with. The author's experience with the hopelessness and destruction of war is what led to him writing this piece. He explained that people's hope of a savior coming down again was merely an illusion, and that this "Spiritus Mundi" (Spirit of the World) is no hero, but a monster which resembles a sphinx.

In the first four lines, Yeats describes a setting in which there is no control, and there is complete anarchy; no rules, no government, no center to what is to come, no plan. Everything is chaotic and nobody knows what to do. "The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned." With war, comes blood and death, but war not only kills people physically, but it kills innocence. Yeats makes a reference to Baptism, a cleansing ritual of water, which is supposed to welcome you into the Church, and to purify you. He takes the concept of water, and changes it from good to bad. From cleansing and freeing, to drowning and killing. He mixes up the places where others would see hope. In the next two lines, he then writes that those who are best and deserve to be the leaders remain silent, while the evil rule the world. Nothing is how it should be. Evil people are taking over.

In the second half, Yeats starts discussing the Second Coming. He mockingly imitates what other people might say, celebrating the hope of the Second Coming, but then beats their side down with his own opinion of it. Whenever he thinks of the Second Coming, he says, an image of a sphinx-like monster appears in his mind. It is important when he uses the body of a lion and the head of a man for this. A lion is a killer, a predator, but it kills only out of instinct and survival. Man, on the other hand, has the mind to be aware and conscious of its doings. This Spiritus Mundi is a killer, and it is perfectly aware that it kills. It murders. "A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun." Yet the creature shows no emotion. It does not care. It just wanders through the desert, throwing off the shadows of the creatures about it, dropping a curtain of darkness over the land. This creature has tricked mankind into waiting endlessly and pointlessly for the Second Coming. And now, it "Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born." This creature does not march with pride and dignity, but it slouches. It drags itself to the place where all religion began. It prepares the land for something much worse.

A summary of the main idea of this poem is that the "Second Coming," as well as any other hope that people look forward to in the future, is not what people will expect. Where people think there will be light, there is only darkness. Where people think they will be saved, they will be destroyed. There is no hope. The hope others see is only a false dream. A dream that hides what will become reality.