In 1919, the year “The Second Coming” was written, World War I, one of the deadliest wars in history History, had just ended and Ireland was in the grip of a war to fight against British control. Tensions between Catholics, Protestants and people of different socio-economic status threatened to erupt at any moment. Seeing all the violence and strife around him, William Butler Yeats, a poet of Irish descent, believed they were omens of more things to come. In his poem, Yeats uses dark and chaotic images to emphasize his apprehension about a bleak future of society resulting from the collapse of the binding force of religious values ​​and to show that societal phenomena are a mirror of the state of people's minds. Through his turbulent and violent descriptions, Yeats creates a vivid picture of severe chaos, which reflects his view of the general human state of mind of the time and sends shivers down the reader's spine. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The poem opens by evoking strong anxiety in the reader with the words "[tossing and turning", almost as if the foundations on which our morals rest are swirling faster and faster and illustrating that people's minds are becoming increasingly dizzy and confused. Yeats condemns the fact that the noble values ​​taught to people “lack all conviction,” while the dark desires of humanity “are full of passionate intensity.” In Irish society, Christianity is an essential pillar to the culture and spirituality of the people. When the central precepts of religion are reduced to mere words and are no longer followed, it is a clear sign that something is wrong in people's minds. Yeats therefore draws attention to Christian values, such as empathy and compassion, which are disintegrating because they are dominated by evils such as selfishness, greed and violence. It is evident that Yeats believes that human nature is akin to selfishness, greed and violence, and must be controlled by strong morality, just like the "hawk", a bird of prey , must be held by the “falconer”. It intensifies the horrible upheaval in the state of the human spirit resulting from the death of the values ​​behind the “religious [ceremonies] of innocence,” which have become mere formalities. Yeats contrasts the pure water of baptism ceremonies, symbolizing the cleansing of sins, with the foul water that drowns, symbolizing the domination of evil over good. With his growing and tumultuous layers of imagery, Yeats expresses his intense fear at the prospect of humanity's decline following the collapse of its moral values, which ultimately serves as a warning of the possibility of future catastrophes. Yeats's images present meanings that can be interpreted in relation to both mind and society, as the state of mind ripples through the social fabric, forcing readers to confront the fact that the present is a harbinger of the future. From World War I to the Irish Civil War, Yeats experienced a social circle that resembled a collapsing "growing gyre" paralleling the chaos of the mind. There was little order amid the many deaths, manipulative policies and incessant struggles for more power. As the core values ​​of religion, which is like a government of the mind, have lost their controlling power, the apparent inability or lack of motivation to stop the uproar also plunges society into a state of "mereanarchy,” which reinforces the “brute beast”---the horrible side of society that has been unleashed. Yeats laments that in these times of evil, the blood of countless victims of violence has "darkened the blood" of the tides of the oceans, which have been "poured out" on society. Just as Egypt is punished by the bloody, undrinkable, fetid Nile in the Old Testament for refusing to free its Jewish slaves, society is now metaphorically punished by the contaminated Nile tides for its degraded state. Modern blood tides are even more horrific, as they are man-made with the blood of victims of violence and flood society uncontrollably. From total chaos to massive bloodshed, Yeats uses disturbing images that can depict both the mind and society to draw the reader's attention to the inseparable nature of the two and arouse a disturbing sense of the possibility of 'a future descent of society into greater darkness. Yeats uses distorted religious imagery to show that social phenomena are simply effects resulting from people's states of mind. Most Christians believe that there will be a second coming of Jesus, mentioned in Matthew 24 and the Revelation of St. John, which will restore peace and peace. compassion towards society. Given the chaos in society at the time, Yeats' anxiety and apprehension reach a fever pitch to the point where even something that is meant to be a beacon of hope like the "Second Coming" turns into a dark and terrifying scene. Ironically, the one who appears at the Second Coming is not Jesus, symbol of the noblest side of man, but an otherworldly being with “[a]. . .lion's body and man's head", reflecting the regression of people towards an animal, beast-like nature. In Yeats's view, although people still look and talk like people, their actions are often no better than those of wild animals. Ominously, this “rough beast” that “heads towards Bethlehem to be born” with its “sluggish thighs” has an “empty and pitiless look like the sun”. Frighteningly, in a world dominated by this beast, things beautiful, holy or beneficial can become hideous, corrupt or harmful: sacred Bethlehem is transformed into the birthplace of a destructive beast; the sun, a life-giving star, becomes cruel; the tides become metaphorically thick with blood. With the total anarchy of the world intensifying disaster and contaminating the respectable, it is not surprising that Yeats sees a "disturbing" image of the "Spiritus Mundi" - a monster surrounded by "birds of the desert" hungry for death - -in the "barren sands of the desert", reflecting both the widespread destruction caused by violence and the bare, empty spiritual aspects of the world. The fact that there are no humans in this image shows his deep concern about the animal state of society, caused by the lack of integrity in the general mentality. Today, even though the beast has slept for “twenty centuries,” it has been disturbed. by a “rocking cradle”, rocked by the upheavals of the mind and society. The coexistence of Jesus and this monster reflects the two facets of human nature and therefore of the states of society. Unfortunately, the degraded human mentality awakens the monster instead of Jesus. Yeats's gloomy predictions about the future of society awaken the reader's most primitive and fundamental instincts: fear and anxiety, an effective tool for conveying his warning message. Yeats describes extreme chaos to show the state of the mind and society at that time and distorts the nature of the Second Coming, a symbol of hope for Christians, into evil?