W.B. Yeats's The Second Coming and Auden Questions

Full credit

1. Visual and Christian imagery.

2. The twenty centuries of stony sleep were the period before Christ was crucified, i.e. 20,000 B.C. to 0 A.D.

3.
a) Personally, I do not believe that a Second Coming exists. Other people may believe Jesus may come up from the ocean and judge humanity to see who should be saved before the apocalypse.

b) The speaker believes that the sphinx will walk towards Bethlehem and be born again. It is completely different from what the speaker says. His is based on belief while mine is based on empirical non-evidence.

4. Things Fall Apart might be about how other countries try to subject other countries. This eventually becomes so great that the native people rebel and force out their invaders, only after things have fallen apart.

While Yeats’ beliefs are wild and have been proven wrong by the test of time, a basic understating of his beliefs, that there will be a Second Coming soon after this poem was written, is necessary to interpret this poem in other ways. The Second Coming may not involve “a shape with lion body and the head of a man” (14) “slouch[ing] towards Bethlehem to be born” (22) but rather can be how society must get back to Judo-Christian values to survive in the world. Before this poem, society, and especially European society, had been flipped by World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Basic ideas like “love thy neighbor” need to be reinstated and propagated so that society can stop killing itself and that there can be order in the world. While Yeats believed in the “Spiritus Mundi” (12), the rest of the world can see this similar concept in worldwide cooperation and international peace organizations. Yeats’ poem may be an over-exaggeration of what may happen, but the urgency which he called for action should be matched in more realistic terms. Society had been corrupted by greed, as evident in imperialism and big business. It is now time to break these chains and demand equality and freedom. Just as Yeats’ said that Jesus will come back and judge those to save before the apocalypse, so will society judge those people who have damned themselves by living a life of corruption and deceit. World War I was the greatest manifestation of sin that the world had seen up to that point. Pride and profit had led European countries to think themselves better than other countries to subjugate them. Pride had led European countries to engage in a dangerous arms race. Pride had also led the soldiers of the countries to see themselves as heroes and liberators, when they were actually taking a shortcut to death by believing in nationalism and the quest for greater power. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was more of an apparent threat to society that it actually was, as its beliefs of international socialism and equality of riches had frightened Westerners into seeing it as evil. This was because Westerners were always concerned with profit and being better than other people, rendering them blind to the fact that socialism would make people’s lives more equal and fair.
3.
a) Brueghel implies that Icarus has only his legs out of the water. This can either represent death or life, as crashing into the ocean means death while baptism symbolizes life.

b) Auden’s poem adheres to Brueghel’s meaning because it contains the duality of Icarus: while it appears dead, it actually is a rebirth.


3.
a) This Birth is like Death because Jesus will go on to form Christianity, which will come in-to direct conflict with other religions, particularly paganism, as well as cause many other hardships.

b) The speaker is no longer at ease back home because he is a pagan and he realizes that Jesus will form a religion that will conflict with paganism.