Deija Duncan

April 17, 2018

3rd Hour

Literary Analysis

The New Historicist View of “The Second Coming”

A poem has many ways of being interpreted by many different people. There are a

number of viewpoints or perspectives in which people tend to take on in order to conclude a

theme to a poem. The poem “ The Second Coming” by William Yeats has surface as well as

hidden meanings depending on the experience you’ve had and how the events relate to you. I am

able to put two perspectives into the poem; one from its historical intended form as well as one in

modern day society.

In the reading of the poem “The Second Coming” by William Yeats, it can be interpreted

historically of the telling of the second coming of Jesus Christ, who once walked the Earth. After

a period of anarchy and violence, a savior is appearing to fix the turmoil that humans have

caused since their first appearance. The metaphorical falcon is the person who has tuned out the

“falconer” or one trying to control the situation. “The widening gyre” is like a tornado which

keeps stirring, increasing the span of its impact. In this poem, the civilians who were once filled

with part innocent and part corrupt are now a group of evilly impacted persons awaiting an

embodiment of a savior. The second stanza of the poem tells how this now evil world has

released an “image out of Spiritus Mundi” which is translated as the spirit of the world. This

wicked figure is now walking the Earth again and is casting a shadow over it to deliver some

type of revelation.
 This short poem can also have a modern translation uncovered that the author may not

have thought about in his perspective when writing it. The poem speaks of an anarchical society

in need of an apocalypse to rid humans of their immoral doings after such a long time. Stirring in

the distance is a solution, which may not be a physical object to the problems of the world. This

solution could be a law to fix violence and disobedience against the law or a new way of thinking

to influence people of the world to improve their actions. The poem includes a line which says,

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed.” This can relate to the recent violence making news in our

country as well as internationally. A symbolic wave of evil has struck upon everyone and has no

control of who it is affecting.

In theory, any piece of text has numerous meanings to it because each person reading it

doesn’t think exactly the same. Stories like this are usually interpreted in two different time

periods because of the period of which they were written. I am able to encase two related

connections of this story of mass violence affecting everyone of a community until something

comes along to interfere with and fix this problem.

 Works Cited

Brizee, Allen, et al. “New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-Present).” ​Purdue Online Writing

Lab​, 14 Feb. 2018, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/10/.

“The Second Coming.” ​Poetry Foundation​, 2018,

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming.