The person01–03
01·Who they are
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.
02·Arc & motivation
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.
03·Key moments
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.
The cast04–05
04·Relationships
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.
05·Connected characters
How is The Falcon connected to the other characters?
Study06–07
06·Questions
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.
07·Essay angles
Use this in your essay
Tool · Essay angles
Passivity as apocalypse
The gyre as character
Falconry as a metaphor for civilization's relationship to the divine
The Falcon and World War I
Air versus stone — the Falcon and the Sphinx as civilizational endpoints