...Second Coming could look like. Turning and turning in the widening gyre (line 1) Yeats imagines the world in a cyclical sphere known a gyre (shape of a cone). In Yeats' note on the text, he states that "the end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the character of the next age, is represented by the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion and of the other to that of its greatest contraction" (2036). Yeats believes that the two thousand years of Christianity will be coming to an end, and after a violent reversal a new age will take its place. The widening part of the gyre is supposed to connote anarchy, evil, and the loss of innocence. The falcon cannot hear the falconer; (2) The falconer in this analogy is most likely God (or Jesus), and the falcon is the follower (or devotee). Humanity can no longer hear the word of God, because it is drowned out by all of chaos of the widening gyre. A wild falcon can symbolize an unconverted Gentile; someone who has sinful thoughts, and does sinful things. A tame falcon (one who listens to the word of God) is a Christian convert. In the Egyptian culture, the falcon is used to represent sky deities (or in Christian terms, God). Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, (3-4) Everything will fall into chaos if there is not a guiding morality such as God. The world cannot stay at the center of the gyre, because it would mean complete destruction. There has to be a reversal...
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