Character analysis
The Falcon
in The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats
The Falcon appears in the opening image of W. B. Yeats's visionary poem "The Second Coming" (1919). Although it only features in the first two lines, it carries significant symbolic weight that anchors the entire work. Circling in a widening gyre, the Falcon has drifted so far from the Falconer that it "cannot hear" his call — a striking detail that highlights the poem's central crisis: the collapse of order, authority, and coherent civilization. The Falcon doesn't consciously rebel; its drift is passive, almost mechanical, dictated by the geometry of the gyre itself. This makes the situation even more unsettling — chaos emerges not from malice but from a gradual, inevitable centrifugal force.
As a symbol of humanity or the civilized world, the Falcon represents a culture that has either outgrown or simply outlasted its animating principle. Its expanding arc reflects the historical moment Yeats identifies: post–World War I Europe spiraling away from the Christian framework that once held it together. The Falcon offers no arc of redemption or transformation; it merely recedes, its silence confirming that the old center cannot hold. In this sense, the Falcon acts less like a character with depth and more as a diagnostic image — a living gauge of spiritual and political disintegration. Its flight establishes the conditions for everything that follows: the unleashing of anarchy, the fading of ceremony, and ultimately the slow, dreadful approach of the Rough Beast.
Who is The Falcon?
The Falcon appears in the first two lines of W. B. Yeats's "The Second Coming" (1919): "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer." It is, by any conventional measure, the briefest of presences — introduced and effectively abandoned before the poem's third line. Yet those two lines function as the entire poem's diagnostic premise, and the Falcon is their engine. It is a trained hunting bird, a creature whose identity is inseparable from its bond with a human master, now spinning outward in an ever-expanding spiral that carries it beyond the range of command. Crucially, it does not rebel. There is no act of will here, no defiance. The geometry of the gyre itself — Yeats's cyclical model of historical time, elaborated in A Vision — dictates the drift. The Falcon is less a character in the dramatic sense and more a condition made visible: the living shape of a world that has traveled too far from its animating centre to find its way back.
What is The Falcon's arc and motivation?
The Falcon has no arc in the narrative sense, and that absence is precisely the point. It does not develop, choose, or transform. Its "motivation," such as it is, is purely centrifugal — it moves outward because the gyre compels it to. Yeats was writing in the immediate aftermath of World War I, a moment when the Christian civilization that had organized European life for two millennia seemed to be exhausting itself. The Falcon embodies that exhaustion: a culture or humanity that has not consciously rejected its foundational principles but has simply, incrementally, drifted beyond their reach. The passivity is more disturbing than active rebellion would be. Anarchy, Yeats implies in the lines that follow, is not the product of villains but of entropy — of systems that have run their course and lost the coherence that once held them together.
What are The Falcon's key moments?
The Falcon's sole moment of significance is also the poem's opening gesture, and Yeats invests it with maximum compression. The image of "the widening gyre" in line one is not decorative; it is a precise cosmological reference to Yeats's theory of interpenetrating gyres, in which every civilizational cycle spins outward to its point of maximum dispersal before a new, counter-rotating cycle begins. By line two, the Falcon "cannot hear" — not will not, but cannot. The physical distance has become absolute. This moment of broken communication is the hinge on which everything else turns. The chaos of "things fall apart" (line 3), the violence of "the blood-dimmed tide" (line 5), and finally the emergence of the Rough Beast — all of it follows logically from this single, quiet failure of a bird to catch its master's voice.
What are The Falcon's most important relationships?
The Falconer is the Falcon's defining relationship, and it is defined entirely by its rupture. Falconry is an ancient, hierarchical discipline — master commands, creature obeys, and that bond is the very model of ordered civilization. Once the Falcon cannot hear, the relationship collapses not through violence but through sheer distance. The Falconer's authority has not been overthrown; it has simply become inaudible. This models Yeats's reading of modernity: tradition and divinity have not been defeated so much as outgrown, left behind by the widening spiral of secular, post-Enlightenment life.
The Rough Beast is the Falcon's dark successor. Where the Falcon spirals outward into formlessness, the Beast slouches inward toward Bethlehem — the two movements are mirror images of the same gyric transition. The Falcon marks the death of one two-thousand-year cycle; the Beast announces the next. They never share the poem's space simultaneously, but their relationship is causative: the Falcon's uncontrolled flight creates the vacuum the Beast fills.
The Sphinx — the stone, desert-bound form the Beast assumes in the speaker's vision — offers a stark physical contrast. The Falcon is air, motion, cultivation, a creature shaped by human hands for human purposes. The Sphinx is primordial, immobile, inhuman. Together they frame the full scope of Yeats's historical terror: the refined world of the Falcon giving way to something utterly alien to it.
How is The Falcon connected to the other characters?
- The Falconer
The Falcon's defining relationship is its severance from the Falconer. The widening gyre physically and symbolically separates them; the Falcon can no longer hear the Falconer's command, signaling the collapse of the hierarchical bond — master and creature, tradition and practitioner, the divine and the human — that once gave the world its coherence.
- The Rough Beast
The Falcon's uncontrolled flight directly precedes and implicitly enables the Rough Beast's emergence. Where the Falcon spirals outward into formlessness, the Beast slouches inward toward Bethlehem — the two movements are mirror images of the same gyric transition, the Falcon marking the end of one two-thousand-year cycle and the Beast heralding the next.
- The Sphinx
The Sphinx is the form the Rough Beast takes in the speaker's vision, and it stands in implicit contrast to the Falcon: where the Falcon is a creature of air, motion, and a dying order, the Sphinx is stone-still, desert-bound, and primordial — the antithesis of the cultivated, soaring world the Falcon represents.
Questions readers ask about The Falcon
What do the Falcon's opening lines in "The Second Coming" mean?
The lines "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer" establish the poem's central crisis: a world that has drifted so far from its animating principle that communication with it is no longer possible. The key word is cannot — not will not. The Falcon hasn't rebelled; Yeats's gyre has simply carried it beyond the reach of the Falconer's voice, making chaos a matter of distance rather than defiance.
What does the Falcon symbolize in "The Second Coming"?
The Falcon symbolizes humanity, or post–World War I European civilization, spiraling away from the Christian framework that once held it together. It represents a culture that has not consciously rejected its foundational principles but has drifted beyond their reach. This outward spiral is passive and mechanical rather than willful, serving as a diagnostic image — a living gauge of spiritual and political disintegration — rather than a dramatic character with depth or agency.
Why can't the Falcon hear the Falconer in Yeats's poem?
The Falcon cannot hear the Falconer because the widening gyre — Yeats's cyclical model of historical time — has carried it too far outward for any command to reach it. The breakdown is physical before it is moral: sheer centrifugal distance makes the Falconer's voice inaudible. Yeats argues that modernity's estrangement from tradition and divinity is less an act of rejection than the endpoint of a civilization that has simply run its course.
What is the Falcon's relationship with the Falconer in "The Second Coming"?
The Falcon's relationship with the Falconer is its defining one, characterized by rupture. Falconry is a hierarchical discipline where master commands and creature obeys — a model of ordered civilization. Once the Falcon cannot hear, that bond collapses not through violence but through distance. The Falconer's authority hasn't been overthrown; it has become inaudible, reflecting Yeats's view that tradition and the divine have been outgrown rather than defeated.
How is the Falcon connected to the Rough Beast in Yeats's poem?
The Falcon's uncontrolled outward flight directly precedes and implicitly enables the Rough Beast's emergence. While the Falcon spirals outward into formlessness, the Beast slouches inward toward Bethlehem — mirror images of the same gyric transition. The Falcon marks the death of one two-thousand-year civilizational cycle; the Beast heralds the next. Their relationship is causative: the vacuum created by the Falcon's drift is what the Beast moves in to fill.
Is the Falcon a villain in "The Second Coming"?
No — the Falcon is not a villain. Its drift is entirely passive, dictated by the geometry of the gyre rather than any act of will or defiance. Yeats deliberately withholds moral culpability: the Falcon does not choose to abandon the Falconer. This passivity is central to the poem's argument that civilizational collapse emerges from entropy and exhaustion, not from malice, making the situation more unsettling than a straightforward story of rebellion.
How does the Falcon differ from the Sphinx in "The Second Coming"?
The Falcon and the Sphinx represent stark contrasts at opposite ends of Yeats's historical cycle. The Falcon is a creature of air, motion, and cultivation — shaped by human hands for human purposes, embodying the refined but dying order. The Sphinx is stone-still, desert-bound, and primordial — utterly inhuman. Together they frame the full scope of Yeats's historical terror: the soaring, cultivated world of the Falcon giving way to something alien and archaic.
Does the Falcon undergo any change or development in "The Second Coming"?
The Falcon has no arc or development, and that absence is significant. It appears only in the poem's first two lines and does not return; it does not choose, transform, or react. Its sole function is to embody a condition — the irreversible outward drift of a civilization from its centre. Yeats frames this static quality as more disturbing than dramatic change would be: the Falcon is a system that has run its course, not a character with anything left to do.
Use this in your essay
Passivity as apocalypse
Argue that Yeats locates the poem's true horror not in violent rebellion but in the Falcon's passive drift — what does this suggest about how civilizations actually collapse?
The gyre as character
To what extent does the gyre, rather than the Falcon, function as the poem's agent? Explore how Yeats uses geometry to displace human moral responsibility.
Falconry as a metaphor for civilization's relationship to the divine
Examine the master–creature dynamic as a model for the human–God or tradition–practitioner relationship, and what its breakdown implies theologically.
The Falcon and World War I
Build a historically grounded reading of the Falcon as post-war European culture — what specific losses of "hearing" does the context illuminate?
Air versus stone — the Falcon and the Sphinx as civilizational endpoints
Compare and contrast the two images to construct a thesis about Yeats's vision of historical cycles and what each extreme represents.