Character analysis
The Falconer
in The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats
The Falconer appears in a crucial image in W. B. Yeats's "The Second Coming": "the falcon cannot hear the falconer." Although he never physically appears in the poem, the Falconer symbolizes ultimate order, mastery, and control over civilization. In falconry, the falconer's voice or lure is meant to bring the bird back; thus, the failure of this communication represents not just a personal shortcoming but a cosmic one. The Falconer stands for the guiding authority—be it divine, political, or moral—that once kept human history in check. His key characteristic is absence: he calls out but is no longer heard. This silence marks the disintegration of the "gyre," Yeats's model of historical cycles, as the present age spirals out of reach of any stabilizing influence. The Falconer's journey, captured in a single line, shifts from implied presence to effective absence; he is not destroyed but made irrelevant by the expanding spiral. Thematically, he embodies all that the poem mourns—tradition, hierarchy, the potential for coherent leadership—and everything that the oncoming rough beast will erase. His silence is the pivot on which the entire poem revolves: once control is abandoned, "mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," making the emergence of a terrifying new order unavoidable.
Who is The Falconer?
The Falconer exists in "The Second Coming" through a single devastating image: "the falcon cannot hear the falconer." He has no physical presence, no spoken lines, and no described appearance, yet he functions as one of the poem's most load-bearing figures. In the traditional practice of falconry, the falconer trains a bird of prey to fly out and return on command—the relationship depends entirely on the bird's willingness to hear and obey. Yeats borrows this image to personify ordered authority itself: divine law, moral tradition, political hierarchy, or any cultivated human system that once gave civilization its coherence. The Falconer is the voice of the gyre's organizing principle, the force that kept the widening spiral from flying apart.
What is The Falconer's arc and motivation?
Because the Falconer is a figurative rather than a dramatic character, his "arc" is compressed into a single line, yet it traces a complete trajectory from presence to irrelevance. He is implied to have once commanded successfully—falconry only becomes a meaningful metaphor if the relationship was functional at some prior point. His motivation, as we can reconstruct it, is maintenance: keeping the trained creature within range, sustaining the compact between authority and the forces it governs. What the poem records is not his destruction but his obsolescence. He presumably still calls; the problem is that his call no longer reaches. The widening gyre carries the falcon beyond the range of his voice, and this spatial metaphor—distance expanding until communication fails—maps onto Yeats's cyclical theory of history, in which each age eventually spins so far from its founding principles that no return is possible.
What are The Falconer's key moments?
The Falconer's single key moment is, appropriately, a moment of failure: the opening line-and-a-half of the poem, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer." This placement is deliberate and catastrophic. Yeats does not build to the breakdown of authority—he announces it immediately, making everything that follows (the anarchy, the blood-dimmed tide, the rough beast) a consequence already set in motion before the poem's argument has properly begun. The Falconer's absence from the remainder of the poem is itself meaningful: once the falcon ceases to hear him, he simply disappears from the text, swallowed by the chaos his silence permits.
What are The Falconer's most important relationships?
The Falconer and the Falcon constitute the poem's foundational broken bond. Their relationship is one of trained reciprocity: the Falconer shapes, directs, and recalls; the Falcon executes and returns. The Falcon's failure to hear him is not an act of rebellion but rather an event of structural drift—the spiral has widened past the point where the signal can carry. This makes the catastrophe systemic rather than personal, which is precisely what makes it so bleak.
The Falconer and the Rough Beast are linked by causality rather than encounter. The Beast "slouches towards Bethlehem to be born" only because the Falconer's authority has been voided. The Beast does not defeat the Falconer; it simply occupies the vacuum his silence creates. In this sense, the Falconer's ineffectiveness is the Beast's origin story.
The Falconer and the Sphinx—the "shape with lion body and the head of a man" that Yeats's speaker perceives in vision—represent antithetical orders of authority. The Falconer's mastery is cultivated, human, and historical; it belongs to the present civilizational cycle. The Sphinx embodies something archaic and inhuman, a form of power that predates ethical or rational governance entirely. Where the Falconer represents what is being lost, the Sphinx represents what is rushing in to replace it.
How is The Falconer connected to the other characters?
- The Falcon
The Falconer's authority is defined entirely through his relationship with the Falcon. The Falcon's failure to hear or heed him is the poem's inciting catastrophe, representing the collapse of the bond between guiding intellect and the forces it once directed. Where the Falconer embodies control, the Falcon's deaf spiral embodies its dissolution.
- The Rough Beast
The Rough Beast is the consequence of the Falconer's lost authority. Once the Falconer's voice goes unheeded, the center cannot hold, and the Beast—slouching toward Bethlehem—fills the power vacuum. The Falconer's silence is, in effect, the Beast's birth announcement.
- The Sphinx
The Sphinx (the vision of the rough beast with a lion body and the head of a man) represents the antithesis of the Falconer's ordered, human-centered world. Where the Falconer stands for cultivated mastery over nature, the Sphinx embodies an archaic, inhuman authority that predates and will outlast him.
Questions readers ask about The Falconer
Who is the Falconer in 'The Second Coming'?
The Falconer is a figurative character in Yeats's poem representing ordered authority—divine law, moral tradition, and political hierarchy—compressed into a single image: "the falcon cannot hear the falconer." Though he has no physical presence or spoken lines, he functions as one of the poem's most important figures, embodying the guiding principle that once held civilization's historical cycle together before it spiraled beyond his reach.
What does the Falconer symbolize in 'The Second Coming'?
The Falconer symbolizes any cultivated human system of authority—political, moral, or divine—that once gave civilization its coherence. In traditional falconry, the falconer's voice recalls the bird; Yeats extends this to argue that legitimate governance depends on communication rather than force. When that communicative bond breaks, the entire civilizational order collapses, making the Falconer a symbol of everything the poem mourns.
What is the Falconer's most famous line in 'The Second Coming'?
The Falconer has no attributed spoken lines in the poem, but the line that defines him is spoken about him: "the falcon cannot hear the falconer," the devastating opening image. Placed in the very first lines—"Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer"—it announces the breakdown of authority before the poem's argument has even started, making everything that follows a consequence already set in motion.
What is the Falconer's relationship with the Falcon in 'The Second Coming'?
The Falconer and the Falcon share a bond of trained reciprocity: the Falconer shapes, directs, and recalls; the Falcon is meant to execute and return. Their relationship reflects the poem's foundational broken bond. Crucially, the Falcon's failure to hear him is not rebellion but structural drift—the widening gyre has carried the bird beyond the range of the Falconer's voice, making the catastrophe systemic rather than personal.
How does the Falconer's relationship with the Rough Beast work in 'The Second Coming'?
The Falconer and the Rough Beast are linked by causality rather than direct encounter. The Beast "slouches towards Bethlehem to be born" only because the Falconer's authority has already been voided. The Beast does not defeat the Falconer; it simply occupies the vacuum his silence creates. In this sense, the Falconer's ineffectiveness is the Beast's origin story—his absence is, in effect, the Beast's birth announcement.
Why does the Falconer fail to control the Falcon in 'The Second Coming'?
The Falconer fails not through any personal weakness or defeat but because the widening gyre—Yeats's model of historical cycles—has expanded the distance between authority and the forces it governs past the point where communication can carry. He presumably still calls; the problem is that his voice can no longer reach. Yeats frames civilizational decline as an almost impersonal geometric process rather than the result of any rival force overcoming him.
How does the Falconer compare to the Sphinx in 'The Second Coming'?
The Falconer and the Sphinx represent antithetical orders of authority. The Falconer's mastery is cultivated, human, and historical—it belongs to the present civilizational cycle and depends on trained, communicative bonds. The Sphinx, described as a "shape with lion body and the head of a man," embodies something archaic and inhuman that predates ethical or rational governance entirely. Where the Falconer represents what is being lost, the Sphinx represents the terrifying power rushing in to replace it.
What happens to the Falconer by the end of 'The Second Coming'?
The Falconer is not destroyed but made irrelevant—his fate is obsolescence, not defeat. After the opening image establishes that the falcon can no longer hear him, the Falconer disappears entirely from the rest of the poem, swallowed by the chaos his silence permits. This absence is itself meaningful: once authority ceases to be heard, it simply vanishes from the story, leaving "mere anarchy loosed upon the world" and the rough beast to fill the void.
Use this in your essay
Authority as communication
Argue that Yeats defines legitimate governance not as force but as heard language—the Falconer's tragedy is not military defeat but communicative failure. What does this imply about Yeats's theory of how civilizations collapse?
Presence through absence
Examine how the Falconer's total absence from the poem after line two amplifies his thematic weight. How does Yeats use negative space to characterize figures of lost order?
The gyre as structural antagonist
Make the case that the Falconer is not overcome by any rival force but by geometry itself—the expanding spiral. What does it mean for a poet to frame historical decline as a mechanical, almost impersonal process?
Tradition versus the archaic
Compare the Falconer (representing cultivated, historical tradition) with the Sphinx (representing pre-civilizational power). Which does Yeats present as more enduring, and what is his attitude toward that answer?
The Falconer as reader surrogate
The poem's speaker watches the falcon spiral away and mourns the lost voice—consider whether Yeats positions his reader in the Falconer's role, calling out interpretive order to a history that can no longer hear it.