My English teacher is in a moment of "Oh crap I was supposed to be teaching that" so we are just now beginning to unpack literature with two weeks left. The approach seems to be dive off the deep end and sink or swim. This is our first piece that we are studying. TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Easily the most cryptic poem I have ever read. God help me KHV.
When all else fails, remember: Everything works with Freudian theory. (i.e. "Second Coming" doesn't necessarily mean the second appearance of a deity). :lolface:
