"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all convictions, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Commentary

The title of this poem alludes to the return of Jesus Christ, as prophesied in the Book of Revelation and elsewhere in the Bible. The title thus establishes an expectation (the return of Jesus Christ) that the poem will overturn.

As the poem opens, a falcon is circling overhead. Unable to hear its trainer, the falcon is disoriented. Instead of its circles becoming narrower and narrower as it returns to its master, the falcon’s circles widen more and more as it seeks the falconer:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer. . . .

In Medieval times, aristocrats used falcons to hunt smaller birds. The falcon and the falconer appear to symbolize Western culture and civilization in their widest senses, including their political, military, and artistic dimensions. As such, the falcon and the falconer represent the larger social constructs that “center” humanity (at least in the West). However, we are told that “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Instead, order has given way to the lawless confusion of anarchy, followed by violence, and a “blood-dimmed tide is loosed” upon the world. Days of innocence are gone, and the good among humanity stand idly by, doing nothing, lacking “all convictions,” while the dregs of society “are full of passionate intensity.”

This dire state of affairs makes the speaker of the poem think that “some revelation” must be about to be seen or heard:

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

At the words “Second Coming,” an image appears to him, coming, it seems, from “Spiritus Mundi,” the World-Soul. (Today, we might refer to this as the collective unconscious.) The image is strange and terrifying, a sphinx-like creature with a “gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,” crawling across the desert on “slow thighs.” The troubling revelation ends abruptly, with a dropping down of darkness.

However, in seeing the image of the strange, fearsome creature, the speaker has come to understand that “twenty centuries of [its] stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle” (that is, by the birth of Christ). Now, instead of the return of the son of God, it appears that some “rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.” The term “beast” makes us think, perhaps, of the “beast” of the Book of Revelation, the anti-Christ.

 
The failure of human civilization will not be followed by a return of Jesus, to judge the living and the dead, but by the birth of some “rough beast” whose rule was interrupted by the “twenty centuries of sleep” that ensued Jesus’ birth. The beast’s “hour has come round at last,” the speaker of the poem tells us, suggesting that its birth is inevitable, even, perhaps, predestined, and it will be born in the same place in which Jesus Christ was born. However, this creature will be no savior. Rather, the poem suggests, it will be the antithesis of a savior; it will be a destroyer.

Although the poem alludes to a Biblical prophecy, to depict the beast of Revelation, it describes a lumbering sphinx. Born of the monsters Typhon and Echidna, the sphinx, one version of which had the body of a lion and the face of a man, has been held to represent various things, including Egypt’s gods and pharaohs. In addition, it served in ancient Egypt as a guard of holy places and tombs. (A sphinx with a woman’s head also strangled travelers who were unable to answer its riddle.) Some sphinxes also had falcons’ heads. In human-headed animals, some scholars have seen a transition from an all-encompassing nature worship in which humans were seen as just another animal among animals (hence, the human heads on animals) to a polytheism in which emergent human beings, as gods, came to rule over nature. Perhaps, in “The Second Coming,” a reversal of this process is happening, as the concept of God as a transcendent Creator is replaced by the older view in which humans are again seen as fully immanent parts of nature.

Polytheistic Egyptian religion was a form of nature worship, in which the Egyptians sought to placate the gods that ruled the natural forces that their Nile-dependent society needed to survive. It is this concept of humanity, nature, and God that, represented by the merciless, sphinx-like creature, will supplant the Judeo-Christian concepts of humanity, nature, and God. A plurality of gods will replace a single God as people concern themselves with this world and their place within nature rather than with one, transcendent God who gives unity to his creation, calling humanity to embrace ideals that are rooted in faith rather than in nature and mere survival. The birth of the sphinx-like creature in Bethlehem appears to symbolize the beginning of a “new” age and the acceptance of a different value system than the one that humanity has embraced for the past two thousand years. It will be a revolutionary time accompanied by violence, lawlessness, and a widespread loss of innocence. An old cycle is about to begin anew.

“Under the Dome“: Stephen King’s “Lord of the Flies”

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Some time ago, Stephen King announced that he wishes he’d written William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In a sense, with Under the Dome, he has written a sequel of sorts to Golding’s novel.

In King’s book, though, it’s not preteens who have been cut off from the rest of society and must fend for themselves against nature (and one another), but adults.

Once the mysterious dome descends that cuts off Chester’s Mill, Maine, from the rest of the US of A, King fairly quickly suggests that his story will concern what happens to a community that is set adrift from the moorings of larger society and the larger society‘s social infrastructure and cultural underpinnings--when, in effect, to some extent, at least, such a community reverts to humanity’s natural state.

On their own, will the townspeople embody Jean Jacques-Rousseau’s idea of the noble savage, or just the savage part?

Not long after the town is isolated, the chief of police is killed when he investigates the invisible barrier that separates Chester’s Mill from the rest of the world, and Assistant Chief Peter Randolph, a lackey of the corrupt second selectman, Big Jim Rennie, assumes command of the town’s police force, deputizing, at Big Jim’s insistence, a trio of the local town’s former high school football players, one of whom is the selectman’s own son, the brutal and sadistic Junior, who’s already murdered two women, Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders.

Unknown to the townspeople themselves, political corruption has been festering in Chester’s Mill for some time. In fact, as Brenda, discovers, her late husband, Police Chief Howard (“Duke”) Perkins was investigating Big Jim’s participation in both the “misappropriation of town goods and services” and the “manufacture and sale of illegal drugs” at the time of his own untimely demise.

Evil is afoot in the town, but, now, following the death of the chief of police, there seems to be no one to check the machinations of Big Jim, especially since he has taken advantage of the crisis to beef up the local constabulary with young men, his own son, included, who are apt to support him.

Many others in town also owe favors to the second selectman. For example, when former Army captain and current short-order cook Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara hopes to enlist Al Timmons, “the Town Hall janitor,” who dines regularly at the restaurant at which Barbie works, to help him liberate the Geiger counter in the town hall’s fallout shelter, the local newspaper owner and editor, Julia Shumway, informs Barbie that Rennie has given “Al a personal no-interest loan to send Al’s youngest son” to college in Alabama, just as Big Jim “holds the papers on Al Fisher’s plow.” Big Jim has used his ill-gotten gains to make members of the community beholden to him, solidifying his power and influence both as a selectman and as a personal benefactor to his constituents.

Without the honorable Chief Perkins to keep Big Jim in check, the reader can expect some Lord of the Flies-type tyranny to unfold soon in the isolated community, wherein the rule of law may be expected to give way to the rule of the survival of the fittest.

It’s just a matter, perhaps, of what is the fittest--unbridled savagery or enlightened self-interest exercised in a spirit of mutual respect on the part of each citizen for the other. The political, social, and moral issues that King’s novel explores are themes of depth and breadth sufficient for the 1,074-page tome.

The first hint of trouble occurs as Barbie and Julia discuss enlisting Brenda’s aid in securing the Geiger counter. As Chief Perkins’ widow, she would have the keys that her husband was provided, keys that grant access to the government buildings throughout Chester’s Mill, including the town hall and its fallout shelter, and, Julia says, Brenda “has no love for James Rennie” and “can keep a secret” (184). During their discussion, they hear “a hollow metallic bang and a yelp of pain. . . . followed by a cries of protest,” and Barbie thinks, “It begins right now.” He corrects himself, though: “He knew that wasn’t true--it had begun yesterday, when the Dome came down. . .” (185).

It’s not long after Junior Rennie is deputized that the sadistic youth’s violence explodes. The town council prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages during the time they are cut off from the rest of society by the presence of the dome, but the town drunk, “Sloppy” Sam Verdreaux, won’t take the “no” of the proprietor of Mill Gas & Grocery for an answer, despite the presence of Deputy Freddy Denton and Special Deputy Rennie. Junior handles the situation by hustling Sloppy Sam out of the store and down the steps, where he runs him headfirst into a parked van, leaving his victim with a lacerated scalp. When Sloppy Sam vows to sue the city for “police brutality,” predicting a win, Junior brings him up short, reminding the drunk that “The courthouse is in Castle Rock, and from what I hear, the road going there is closed” (190).

The town is cut off, not only from the greater society of the country, but from recourse to the laws of the land. It is at the mercy of the local authorities, including the likes of Junior Rennie--a chilling thought, to be sure. Junior loses no time in driving home this point to the small crowd of witnesses that has assembled at the scene:

“He is being arrested for violating the new no-alcohol rule, instituted by Chief Randolph. Take a good look!” Freddy shook Sam. Blood flew from Sam’s face and filthy hair. “We’ve got a crisis situation here, folks, but there’s a new sheriff in town, and he intends to handle it. Get used to it, deal with it, learn to love it. That’s my advice. Follow it, and I’m sure we’ll get through this situation just fine. Go against it, and. . . “ He pointed to Sam’s hands, plasticuffed behind him (190).

Under the Dome’s parallels to Lord of the Flies don’t appear to be accidental or coincidental. In fact, in case any of his readers missed the covert association with Golding’s novel, King himself makes the comparison overt:

. . . Benny said, “Until this. . . [crisis] ends, the cops can do pretty much what they want.”

That was true, Joe reflected. And the new cops weren’t particularly nice guys. Junior Rennie, for example. The story of Sloppy Sam’s arrest was already making the rounds.

“What are you saying?” Norrie asked Benny.

“Nothing right now. It’s still cool right now.” He considered. “Fairly cool. But if this goes on. . . Remember Lord of the Flies?”. . . (223)

What begins to happen in Chester’s Mill begins with the weakest, most helpless, disenfranchised individuals, but, it seems safe to say, the same abusive tactics that have been used against Sloppy Sam Verdreaux eventually will be used against others with more clout, more influence, and more money as the “crisis situation” continues.

But there may be more disturbing parallels than those between King’s novel and Golding’s book--real-life, real-world parallels.

President Barack Obama’s call for an elite federal police force that is as well equipped as the military and his chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel’s comment that the president’s administration should not let a crisis go to waste (“and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before”) have eerie parallels, on a national--and real--level to the imaginary happenings inside the isolated community of King’s Chester’s Mill, Maine, and, indeed, to those which take place in Golding’s novel.

If we missed the message concerning the evils of anarchy and tyranny conveyed by Lord of the Flies, maybe we can learn, from the example of Under the Dome’s Chester’s Mill, what’s in store for us under Obama’s administration, unless the “crisis situation” in Washington changes this November.

In addition to exploring the effects of social isolation, potential anarchy, tyranny, exploitative capitalism, true religious faith, and the cooperative interaction of the beleaguered community, King also wants his novel to be about ecology and the potentially catastrophic effects that dependence on oil, reckless pollution of the environment, and arrogant disregard for the welfare of the planet may create.

He works this thematic thread into the story by referencing the need to conserve the propane gas that powers the stoves and other equipment inside Sweetbriar Rose, a restaurant which, owned by Rose Twitchell, employs several of the town’s residents, including Dale Barbara, and the foolishness of motorists who refuse to conserve their fuel, even despite the descent of the dome. After the accident that costs Rory Dinsmore one of his eyes, the police shut down the protests against the government and the churches’ meetings at the field day, and the townspeople return to their homes and shops:

Those with cars got into them. They all tried to drive away at the same time.

Predictable, Joe McClatchey thought. Totally predictable.

Most of the cops worked to unclog the resulting traffic jam. . . .

Benny said, “Look at those idiots. How many gallons of gas do you think they’re blowing out their tailpipes? Like they think the supply’s endless” (222).

If the addition of yet another theme seems a bit much, even for a 1,074-page novel, one should give King the chance to dovetail his environmental concerns with those regarding the effects of social isolation, potential anarchy, tyranny, exploitative capitalism, true religious faith, and what it takes to win against the monster. Under the Dome, after all, is a large novel, with plenty of room, and one which invites, by King himself, comparison to Golding’s Nobel-prize-winning Lord of the Flies.

Presto! You Have a Plot!

Copyright Gary L. Pullman

 

It’s fairly easy to plot a contemporary horror novel if you know the formula, which is also fairly simple--quite simple, in fact, consisting of three phases:

1. A series of bizarre incidents occurs.
2. The main character discovers the cause of the bizarre incidents.
3. Using his or her newfound knowledge as to the cause of the bizarre incidents, the main character (usually assisted by others) puts an end to them (often by killing a monster).

With this formula in mind, all a writer has to do is to:

1. Establish the cause of the series of bizarre incidents; if the cause is human or humanoid (for example, a monster with a will and personality), give it a plausible motive for its actions.
2. Make a list of the bizarre incidents that will occur.
3. Establish the means by which the main character learns the cause of the bizarre incidents.
4. Have the main character use this knowledge as to the cause of the bizarre incidents to put an end to them.
5. It helps (but is not mandatory) to associate the monster or other cause of the bizarre incidents with a real-life horror.

In a nutshell, that’s all there is to plotting the contemporary horror novel.

Let’s conclude with an example (Stephen King's Desperation):

1. Establish the cause of the series of bizarre incidents. The demon Tak escapes from the caved-in mine in which he has been imprisoned for several decades and battles God, seeking to demonstrate its superiority to the Christian deity.
2. Make a list of the bizarre incidents that will occur. In Nevada, a dead cat is seen nailed to a highway sign. An abandoned recreation vehicle (RV) sits alongside a lonely stretch of highway, its door flapping in the breeze. A sheriff, acting crazy, arrests a couple on trumped up drug charges, threatening to kill them on their way to jail. The nearest town, Desperation, seems abandoned, except for the corpses that litter the streets. The sheriff has arrested several other individuals, also on false charges; among his prisoners are the members of the RV family, whom he supposedly rescued from (non-existent) gunmen. Vultures, scorpions, wolves, and other animals, under the sheriff’s telepathic control, attack people. A preteen prisoner, David Carver, miraculously escapes from jail, afterward performing additional miracles (using a cell phone with a dead battery and multiplying a supply of sardines and crackers). The demon Tak, who is behind the series of bizarre incidents, serially possessing the sheriff and others as he wears out their bodies, fears the preteen. Strange idols cause sexually perverse thoughts and feelings in those who touch them.
3. Establish the means by which the main character learns the cause of the bizarre incidents. A character who has witnessed several of the bizarre incidents that befall his town tells David and the others in their party about the demon that has escaped from the caved-in mine and how it possesses one person after another.
4. Have the main character use this knowledge as to the cause of the bizarre incidents to put an end to them. Assisted by others, David reburies Tak inside the collapsed mine.
5. It helps (but is not mandatory) to associate the monster or other cause of the bizarre incidents with a real-life horror; for example, the monster of cause may symbolize such a real-life horror. Tak could represent social anarchy and its consequences.

Presto! Flesh out the skeleton of your story, possibly adding a related subplot or two, and you have the plot for one scary horror novel (especially if you happen to be Stephen King.)