"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats wrote his "The Second Coming" in January of 1919, three years after the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and after the First World War had ravaged Europe from 1914 until 1918. Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart, his first novel, in 1958, just two years prior to the establishment of an independent Nigerian state. These two seemingly unrelated pieces of literature are actually more related to each other than just the title.
All of the horrors that occurred during the First World War and conflicts between the Irish and English can explain the intricate and chaotically dark imagery of "The Second Coming. …