What is gyre literally?
: a circular or spiral motion or form especially : a giant circular oceanic surface current. gyre. verb. gyred; gyring. Definition of gyre (Entry 2 of 2)
What is the message of the Second Coming?
Yet for all its metaphorical complexity, “The Second Coming” actually has a relatively simple message: it basically predicts that time is up for humanity, and that civilization as we know it is about to be undone. Yeats wrote this poem right after World War I, a global catastrophe that killed millions of people.
What is a widening gyre?
The ‘gyre’ metaphor Yeats employs in the first line (denoting circular motion and repetition) is a nod to Yeats’s mystical belief that history repeats itself in cycles. But the gyre is ‘widening’: it is getting further and further away from its centre, its point of origin.
What does the blood dimmed tide is loosed mean?
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere. The ceremony of innocence is drowned; These three lines describe a situation of violence and terror through phrases like “anarchy,” “blood-dimmed tide,” and “innocence [. . .] drowned.” (By the way, “mere” doesn’t mean “only” in this context; it means “total” or “pure.”)
What does the falcon symbolize in the Second Coming?
The falcon described in “The Second Coming” is symbolic of the human race, specifically in modern times, as it has become disconnected from its roots. When Yeats writes, “[t]he falcon can’t hear the falconer,” he means that humanity has lost touch with its original values.
What happens in a gyre?
A gyre is a large system of rotating ocean currents. Wind, tides, and differences in temperature and salinity drive ocean currents. Larger, sustained currents—the Gulf Stream, for example—go by proper names. Taken together, these larger and more permanent currents make up the systems of currents known as gyres.
What is the widening gyre in the Second Coming?
In “The Second Coming,” one gyre, or epoch of history, is about to come to an end, giving way to another. This is the epoch that has lasted since the birth of Christ. Yeats senses that this gyre is in the offing by the fact that the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Which best reflects the central message of the Second Coming?
the mind’s eternal life. Which best reflects the central message of “The Second Coming”? A dark future is foreshadowed by the violence of the present.
What does the center Cannot hold mean?
The “centre that cannot hold” may be society’s ties to religion or other traditional cultures or worldviews that have been rendered basically moot by the war. And “ceremony of innocence” being drowned?
What weapon is used to kill the Jabberwocky?
Vorpal Blade
What is Outgrabe?
outgrabe – squeaked. Jubjub bird – dangerous animal. frumious – combination of “fuming” and “furious”; violently angry.
What is the main idea of the Second Coming?
The basic theme of the poem is the death of the old world, to be followed by the rebirth of a new one. It draws upon Biblical symbolism of the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ to make its point.
What does the cradle symbolize in Second Coming?
Although 2,000 years seems like a long time to us, Yeats compares it to a single night of an infant’s sleep, which is suddenly “vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.” The cradle reinforces the image that something has recently been “born,” and its motion also serves as a metaphor for social upheaval.
What is the mood of the poem The Second Coming?
Answers can vary, but the mood of the poem is doom and destruction or a similar feeling. Words like “things fall apart,” “anarchy,” “blood-dimmed,” “darkness drops,” and “nightmare” help to convey a sense of violent destruction, doom, and hopelessness in the reader.