Explanation: Widening Gyre

While the word itself is easy enough to ascertain etymologically, though it's not necessarily easy pronounce (it rhymes with liar), the reference made maybe unfamiliar to those whose cultural context does not include William Butler Yeats, specifically his poem "The Second Coming". The first stanza is as follows:

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. (1)

By gyre, Yeats is referring, literally, to two inverted conical helices (think two tornadoes, one inside the other so that the tip of one is in the same space as the top of the other). This gyre is a metaphysical/mathematical representation of how "each individual [is] composed of warring elements, and that this mingling of opposites held true for each country, and each era" (2). Composed of not only space and time (a historical revolution is 2000 years), but also conflicting moral beliefs (that wax, wane, then wax again over time); this is intended to explain how a "person can be seen to possess some characteristics that are directly opposite to [their] dominant nature" (3). Yeat's gyre is similar to the ideas represented by a Yin-Yang.


How do you think this applies to our hero a la Kevin Smith?


(1)http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/780/
(2)http://masterworksbritlit.wordpress.com/?s=gyre&searchbutton=Go!
(3)ibid