The Center Holds

The Center Cannot Hold vs The Center Holds

Hey! William Butler Yeats the center did hold. In Yeats’ poem The Second Coming the narrator is foretelling any century past the twentieth century to failure. The narrator also speaks on how society as a whole is unraveling. He envisions a best of the world’s own making to rise up and end the world in a “Second Coming”. Jonathan Alter’s book The Center Holds: Obama and his Enemies  makes a direct reference to Yeats poem in its title. However unlike the third line of Yeats’ poem , “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;” (line 3), Alter thinks that the center can hold and does. Alter’s book describes President Barack Obama’s campaign for reelection against Mitt Romney in the 2012 elections.

Obama as the first black president shows how society has evolved into something Yeats could not have imagined, Yeats wrote this poem in 1919 after World War I. Although the poem was written and published far before President Obama’s first election, Yeats’ themes can be applies or in this case contradicted against many of today’s issues. Alter uses Yeats’ poem in the title of his book as an attention grabbing title and to attract a broad group of readers, because Yeats poem is widely referenced. “”The Second Coming” may well be the most thoroughly pillaged piece of literature in English.” Nick Taber declares in his article No Slouch in which he list the many works that employ Yeats ideas (Taber). Obama was down a lot if points in the polls and his reelection looked bleak especially against all the opposing factors brought on by the Republican Party and his previous years of presidency. However the votes came through and the center did hold. The usage of Yeats poem as a symbol for all the trials the President has to overcome is truly amazing. As stated before Yeats believes the world is collapsing and the center or the president is Alter’s book will not be reelected. Nevertheless the president succeeds and the center holds.

Work Cited

Alter, Johnathan. “Excerpt: The Center Holds.” NPR, n.d Web. 25. Sept. 2015.

Taber, Nick. “No Slouch.” The Paris Review RSS. The Paris Review, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.

Yeats, William Butler. “The Second Coming.” Poetry Foundation. Ed. Austin Allen. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.