The Second Coming [Yeats] What/Who is the beast? (1 Viewer)

[NLAngel]

I'm confused with the second coming.
The lines that go:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

My teacher says it's Christ as he let the WW1 and Irish war happen
But I did some research and it could refer to 'Anti Christ movement to take over the world just like Christianity began in Bethlehem.

In the HSC you won't get marked down for different intepretations right? Isn't that what the module is all about?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Lordie]

It is a figure of an anti-christ, yeah. It's representative of a Sphinx, "A shape with lion body and the head of a man".

The line, "Vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle" is representative of Christ's birth, however Yeats is questioning, with so much disorder in the world, what is going to come? Not christ, but an anti-christ?

The poem is open to interpretation, but that's how I read it, and what my English teacher told me.

 

[Hatta]

As Lordie said, the Antichrist.
The "rough beast" is the Antichrist masquerading as Christ when the world has fallen into disarray and the people are looking for a savior with false hope.

"the ceremony of innocence is drowned" is a reference to baptism, and generally points to religious ceremonies becoming lost, or at least their original meaning being lost.

Yeats was big on mythology and was a believer in the gyre theory (not sure of the real name, I should probably find out before tomorrow heh), that at each end of the gyre, a major, world-altering event happens, and as the gyre spirals out of control toward cataclysm, human values and that sort of thing are shaken up.

I've lost my train of thought now, but I hope that helps a bit.