Yeats' "The Second Coming" and apocalyptic prophecy in post-war poetry

¶ … Second Coming by William Butler Yeats is a significant poem written immediately after the carnage of World War 1, so the reader can surmise that Yeats was impacted emotionally by the millions of Europeans who died in that bloody conflict. The "widening gyre" in the first line refers to a historical cycle that takes about 2,000 years to be completed; it has been about 2,000 years since the birth of Christ, so maybe He is due to return, which sets the tone for this poem. When Yeats says "more anarchy is loosed upon the world," it seems as though he is projecting ahead to future wars (and given that Hitler would soon put together killing machines and strategies, he was prophetic indeed).

If the falcon "…cannot hear the falconer," that could mean that leadership has failed; the world's population (personified through the falcon) is without a rudder or a compass and has no one minding the store so to speak. "The best lack all conviction" suggests that good people are either unable to speak out about the horrors, or too frightened to have values and beliefs. And the "worst" (this could be the war mongers, people like Hitler) are "full of passionate intensity").

"The Second Coming" is a phrase often used in reference to the hope and/or belief that Jesus Christ will return to earth to straighten out the mess that is here, to heal the wounds and stop the violence. When Yeats writes about a "…shape with lion body and the head of a man" -- which could be interpreted as the Sphinx by the pyramids in Egypt -- he is projecting what the birth of another Savior might look like. But wait, might this "rough beast" actually be the devil and not Christ? Some might say Yeats is being blasphemous by suggesting that the coming of another "savior" might not be Christ-like but might actually be something devilish. Others believe (and it makes sense) that Yeats was not just responding to the violence of the Second World War; he was saying the world is on the brink of an apocalyptic revelation. Anyone following the bloody path and beheadings of ISIS could agree with Yeats.

Araby -- James Joyce

This short story is on the surface a coming of age tale of a young lad in Dublin. I contains plenty of universal themes such as loss of innocence, the idealized world of a young, impressionable young boy, and the pain that is part of falling in love (or fantasizing love) for the first time. But Araby also has many religious references and symbols, as Joyce has tucked religious themes into the narrative -- sometimes subtly, other times very obviously.

For starters, the apple tree and the bicycle pump in the "wild garden" have religious connotations; is the bicycle pump supposed to symbolize the serpent in the Garden of Eden -- and is the apple tree also to be viewed as the tree in the Garden (with forbidden fruit)? Reading carefully through the story, there are numerous allusions and some strong themes as well.

The boy is living in the former home of a priest who passed away; this could be a way of the narrator saying religion once thrived here but it is gone (and religion was once part of the boy's life but he has found a way to replace God through his obsession for Mangan's sister (she is his new icon). Even the books that the priest left in the house are interesting from a religious point-of-view. The Devout Communicant is a book about the Protestant world of religious devotion (ironically, the Catholic priest had a book about Protestantism). Another seemingly powerful religious symbol is the sister of Mangan, as she stands under the light near the front door she may symbolize the Virgin Mary, or perhaps an angel. She is "defined by the light" and the light falls on her pretty hair and on the "white curve of her neck"; she actually has a kind of halo, making her like an angel.