Eliot and Yeats: Modern times are awful

By Anonymous
Both Eliot and Yeats give me the impression that modern times were filled with despair and evil. As if the world was hopeless.

"The Waste Land" painted a picture of desperation in my mind. Eliot describes scenes in the reality he's living from the perspective of multiple people. I think he tries to find purpose in all of these cases,  but finds none hence the name the waste land.

Yeats' "Second Coming" is reminiscent of Satan tricking Eve into eating the fruit. The way he depicts the world fills the reader with a sense of helplessness. That action changed the purity of humanity and the second coming that he's describing is the second coming of something evil which is going to be worse than the first. If all sin originated from the first time Satan was on earth then what is to come of his second coming?

P.S. I dropped a comment on Ethan and Sophia's posts

Comments

  1. Ty GoramJanuary 15, 2018 at 5:03 PM

    That last sentence is haunting. If the first time, not having as near as much preparation time as he does now, Satan damned humanity. I can't even imagine how the second time will be.

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  2. Will BradyJanuary 15, 2018 at 7:53 PM

    That's a way of looking at "The Second Coming" that I really hadn't considered! Could the first half of the poem really be referring to the Fall? The line about innocence being drowned certainly falls more in line with man's original descent to sin than with the chaos of the Tribulation, at least... The other lines could apply to either.

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  3. UnknownJanuary 15, 2018 at 9:28 PM

    Dang Tobias, I think you have blown my mind! The many times I've read the "Second Coming," and still not deciphered all its meaning, (probably purposefully) I've read it in your typical Jesus coming back for a second time sort of manner. But you have put a wrinkle in my thoughts! Perhaps the overwhelming dread and darkness that fills a poem that you would think be at least victorious (if having to do with Christ) is because of the shift in its Subject. Perhaps the introduction of your "rocking cradle" and "Bethlehem to be born" right at the end of the poem (which is at first glance confusing) actually the 'second coming of Satan' but first coming of Christ and Hope. And perhaps we're entirely wrong! But this thought is so worth it :)

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