I think that the reality that enveloped Europe after World
            War I represented on factor that influenced Yeats' writing. Emerging from the war, Yeats
            and many other thinkers were convinced that the structures and institutions that
            supposedly provided a sense of totality in the lives of individuals were the same forces
            that brought on the war, bringing unprecedented death, suffering, and destruction.  This
            is the first stanza of the poem of the images such as "the widening gyre" and the
            twisted relationship between the "falcon" and "falconer."  It is this portion of the
            poem that makes Yeats mournful for what was endured and the sense of fragmentation,
            "things fall apart," is an excellent representation of Europe after the First World
            War.
The second stanza represents Yeats' fears of the
            future.  As bad as the First World War was for Europe, Yeats is convinced that the
            fragmentation present is going to actually be worse for Europe.  It is going to be a
            situation where some "rough beast" will be born.  Yeats was concerned with the overthrow
            of the Czar in Russia and the Communist government that emerged from it.  At the same
            time, Yeats is almost prophetic in writing about the European fascism that will take a
            hold of Europe in the 1930s in the form of Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, and, of course,
            Adolf Hitler.  In the second stanza, the fragmented reality of Europe and the lack of
            any totality is what influences Yeats into constructing a vision of the future that is
            far worse than the despair of the present.
 
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