The Second Coming

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-7

Part 2, Chapters 1-3

Part 2, Chapters 4-5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Stars

Throughout The Second Coming, stars and the universe beyond Earth are often symbols that represent the mental state of various characters. Allison uses stars as an allegory for her own episodes of seclusion, suggesting that her sense of self can expand and then collapse for self-protection. She tells her psychologist, Dr. Duk, that “a red giant collapses into a white dwarf. Hard and bright as a diamond. That’s what I was trying to do when my mother found me in the closet going down to my white dwarf” (90). Allison describes her red dwarf self as a form of vulnerability, indicating that she is too large and trying to please too many other people. After the strain of living up the expectations of others becomes too much, she must collapse into a smaller, denser state like a white dwarf star. The language she uses to describe the white dwarf, hard and bright, indicates that her periods of nonverbal isolation are a form of self-protection.

Similarly, Will uses stars as a literal symbol for human brain matter. When he meditates upon his father’s suicide by gunshot, he imagines the moment when “brain cells which together faltered and fell short, now flowered and flew apart, flung like stars around the whole dark world” (149). The image of scattered brain matter after a gunshot is metaphorically compared to stars in the night sky, juxtaposing a moment of horror with a beautiful image from the natural world. The image of stars flying apart to fill the darkness parallels the theory of the universe’s creation, referred to as the “Big Bang.” Walker Percy’s allusion to the scientific Big Bang theory also subtly implies a connection to a literal big bang—a gun firing. Will’s conception of suicide is therefore framed as a moment of divine creation, not just of destruction. Likewise, Will justifies his own attempt to end his life as a moment of divinity and creation, helping to answer the question of the existence of God in a useful way.

Both Allison and Will use stars to compare the human mind to the larger universe. The symbolic continuity between human brains and the stars in space draws together the small scale and the large scale, revealing how the thoughts of a single person are intrinsically linked to the significance of the whole universe.

Animals

Animals in The Second Coming expose the way in which humans feel lost because of their disconnection from instinct and survival. Throughout the novel, Will often notices how animals appear to be unconcerned with the anxieties and existential confusion that plagues humans. His observations suggest that animals are not conflicted because they are concerned only with fulfilling their instinct to survive. Humans, in contrast, become so concerned with other types of fulfillment that some even seek to end their own lives.

At the beginning of The Second Coming, Will comes to realize one of the reasons for his dissatisfaction with life while looking at a cat. As he watches the cat, he describes the animal’s contentedness with itself and its circumstances:

There was the cat. Sitting there in the sun with its needs satisfied, for whom one place was the same as any other place as long as it was sunny—no nonsense about old haunted patches of weeds in Mississippi or a brand-new life in a brand-new place in Carolina—the cat was exactly a hundred percent cat, no more no less (16).

In contrast, Will believes that no human is ever one hundred percent themselves. Rather, outside expectations and social pressures force people to act in ways that do not align with their natures.

In addition, Will often notices birds flying over the golf course during his games. The birds, unlike Will, make decisive actions during their hunting. He describes seeing a hawk dive, recounting that, unlike him, “the hawk was not of two minds” (48). Will similarly compares the movement of the hawk to the movement of the golfers: “a hawk flew over, a dagger-winged falcon, its flight swift and single-minded and straight over the easy ambling golfers. When it reached the woods it folded its wings so abruptly as if it had been shot and fell like a stone” (70). These encounters with the animal world indicate that animals are more content and decisive than humans because they live only according to their survival instincts.

However, when Will attempts to die by suicide in the cave, this dynamic between humans and animals gains nuance. While taking sleeping pills, Will dreams about the tiger that was once found fossilized in the cave, imagining that it is lying beside him and also dying. However, Will finds this thought amusing, as the situation reverses his original assumption:

[T]he joke was that for the first time in the history of the universe it was the man who knew who he was, who was as snug as a bug in his rock cocoon, and the beast who did not, who was fretful, unsure of himself and the future, unsure what he was going here (222).

While animals can live purposeful and direct lives, Will realizes that only humans can experience purposeful and decisive deaths. Because animals naturally avoid death, it is a terrifying and confusing experience for them. Humans, in contrast, can find ways to rationalize death as a meaningful experience.

Words

Words are a recurring motif in The Second Coming. Throughout the novel, words function as an important way to convey meaning. As both Will and Allison experience moments where important words lack meaning, their entire existence is therefore destabilized and left meaningless. Without the correct words to describe something, Percy suggests, life and existence will lack coherent meaning and purpose as well.

Allison in particular struggles with language, and her inability to understand other people or express herself clearly indicates the difficulty she has with understanding her role and relationship to others. Allison speaks in puns and riddles, often using words that have double-meanings. When she hears other people speaking, she is often confused by the gap between the literal definition of the words and the apparent purpose of the speaker:

Words surely have meanings, she thought, and there is my trouble. Something happens to words coming to me from other people. Something happens to my words. They do not seem worth uttering. People don’t mean what they say. Words often mean their opposites (82).

Allison struggles to connect to other people. As words are not closely connected to their actual meanings for her, she views them as a worthless form of exchange.

Will and Allison’s relationship begins because Will is able to offer Allison the words that she needs to know in order to get what she wants. He acts as her translator, helping her to know what devices to ask for at the hardware store so that she can move her stove. After telling her the term “creeper,” Will realizes that Allison sees the word as equally valuable to the material goods: “[S]he treated the gift of the word exactly like the avocados” (115). While Will does not struggle to talk with people, he often fails to express himself authentically, never sharing with his friends or family that he is struggling with suicidal urges. However, his mental transformation is also framed as a linguistic transformation. It is only when Will names an enemy that he is able to fight it, and “not to know the name of the enemy is already to have been killed by him” (271). By articulating that his enemy is the desire for death, Will is finally able to begin fighting to live.