The Second Coming refers to the Christian and Islamic belief in the return of Jesus Christ from heaven to earth. Jesus came back once to save the world, and the Second Coming is his return back to earth to save it again. Jesus is referred to as the messiah or “chosen one”, the one to save the world from destruction. The poem the Second Coming by William Yeats emphasizes the irony of the poem’s savior. The tone of this poem emphasizes how the world needs to be saved from doom and destruction by incorporating hopelessness within the stanzas to show the impossibility of being saved.
The speaker first gives us the problems surrounding his world, the havoc occurring around him, and the allusion gives the reader a visual aid to compare with the figure, showing how opposite they are which then emphasizes that the world is turned upside-down. The first stanza gives a visual image of the chaos and conflict surrounding the world. The words drowned, fall apart, cannot hold, all show that the world needs saving. By using the allusion to the second coming it creates meaning by contrasting the shape of the lion body to Jesus, and underlines how opposite the two of them are. This creates hopelessness for the speaker, knowing that his savior is in fact the opposite of Jesus, and lacks the traits to save the world. The lion body doesn’t appear to be the chosen one, he doesn’t look like his intentions are to save the world “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun”, Jesus is certainly not pitiless, which is why the allusion creates contrast between the figure and Jesus. The shape is the complete opposite of who Jesus is, which reveals the irony of the Second Coming in the poem using pitiless, dark, vexed diction. The dark words also emphasize how hopeless the speaker is, and his desperate need to be saved.
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