SOURCE: "The Second Coming' and The Waste Land': Capstones of the Western Civilization Course," in College Literature, Vol. XIII, No. 3, Fall, 1986, pp. 240-53.

In the following essay, Brooker examines "The Second Coming" and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land as these poems confront the decline of western civilization.

"The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats and The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot are ideal companion poems to use as a capstone experience in a course in Western Civilization. Both poems deal powerfully with the state of civilization in the twentieth century; both suggest that civilization is falling apart and each in its own way reveals the cause of the crisis. Both poems (especially The Waste Land) allude to central events and major texts of, the last several thousand years of Western (and Eastern) Civilization. The Waste Land, furthermore, suggests that the main activity of general humanities courses...