The Center Cannot Hold (spoiler, sorta)

[cloudmonet]

“The center cannot hold,” Steve Barkin told Ron again and again in the Graduation episode, and Ron didn’t know what Barkin meant by this. Well, I do. It’s from a poem by William Butler Yeats, published in 1921, so it’s way out of copyright and I can quote all of it with impunity. It’s a bit difficult, but not terribly so.


THE SECOND COMING

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.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

— W.B.Yeats


I’m not sure exactly when Yeats wrote this, though it seems filled with what was then called the World War and is now known as World War One; this must be its inspiration. Such extreme pessimism is often found in art from the early 1900s.

Though he only quotes one line, the whole first stanza seems very pertinent to Steve Barkin’s probable biography. We now know he was also popular as a high school senior, dated the girl he thought was the love of his life, and did something heroic, though exactly what is left to our imaginations.

We also know Barkin fought in Vietnam, since he says so in “Two to Tutor”, and he has a heck of a case of post-traumatic stress syndrome. This appears as early as “Tick Tick Tick,” and seems to have reached some crescendo in season four, possibly because Bob, Mark, and Steve (Loter) discovered new comic potential in Barkin’s flashbacks, but perhaps also because the imposing, authoritarian figure seemed somewhat less imposing to seniors than he was to sophomores.

“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 . . .”

Sounds very like how it could feel to go directly from high school to Vietnam. We don’t know for sure how old Barkin is; he could have gone to college to get his teaching degree first, but it seems more likely his rather blind patriotism sent him off to war straight from high school. Becoming a teacher could get you a deferrment back then.

Of course, this passage also provides a pretty good summary of events within the episode itself.

This poem was very famous in the 1960s when I was going to high school and college; “the rough beast” business provoked a lot of commentary. Nobody came up with the interpretation that seems obvious to me now, that Yeats was saying “We’re doomed. Even in Jesus comes back, he’s not going to be very nice about how he fixes the mess we’ve made of the world.”

It was perhaps this understandable pessimism, rampant in the years between World Wars, and taught to “baby boomers” like me, and our fictional Steve Barkin, that caused the “no, you’re wrong,” optomism of the 1960s as a reaction. The Kim Possible show is another product of the same sort of optomism as “British Invasion” music like the Beatles, and it’s interesting that they chose this poem, of all things, as a text for their last show.

It seems like they’re attempting to refute it. Barkin’s position is presented as wrong. Unlike Barkin and his high school sweetheart, Kim and Ron are not going to break up. Things won’t fall apart and their center will hold. At least in the confines of their own world, Kim and Ron will see to that.

[Rose Hunts]

Wow, know I know why I am so scared of it... LOL?

[mike]

I don't even know what it means, but I know its a bad thing
- Ron Stoppable

No wonder, even he is scared of it LOL ;D

[xcaliber]

Hey i know this poem. Did it in grade 10 i think or was it 9.

[love2cookpie]

Absolutely fantastic. And what a fantastic poem. I somehow missed that one in highschool/college. We had to spend most of our time wasting it on D.H. Lawrence.

[DP]

That was a wonderful analysis. I'm also happy that Barkin was proven wrong. That whole center cannot hold thing was a really pessimistic outlook on life, but as you illustrated, KP showed us that it's not the end of the world!

[Guru Mandi (will return)]

Never heard this before, but it's wonderfully done. It makes sense, but did anyone else thing of the poem relating to the Coming of Jesus, especially when they mentioned Bethlehem?

[Loser7]

Does the Center Hold? Was the Name of my Philosphy book I took during winter intersession last December/January.

My teacher said it basically was the difference between exestentialism v. Nihlism. In other words- it was the difference between

1) The world has meaning. All events are interconnected and everything we do is of importance and comes around full circle.

and

2) Our world is meaningless. All events are seperate and uninfluenced by one another. We live in a world full of unconnected series of somewhat random events.

[cloudmonet]

Existentialism and Nihilism are both pretty pessimistic philosophies created in 20th Century Europe. I would not want to be in any part of Europe in the first half of the 20th Century.

mangafangirl said:

Never heard this before, but it's wonderfully done. It makes sense, but did anyone else thing of the poem relating to the Coming of Jesus, especially when they mentioned Bethlehem?

Yeah, in this poem Yeats seemed to fear that this might not be such a good thing because the returned Jesus might be a wrathful spirit. For any sort of Christian (I suppose he was Irish Catholic), this is extreme pessimism. But World War One freaked out many serious artists.

[mrmatt]

Excellently researched my friend. We also have the "lost generation" phenomenon that added to the extreme pessimism of the between the war years of the 1920's-1930's. So many young men were killed world wide by the "Great War" (WWI) that an entire generation was practically lost. Seems like a heck of reason to me to fear the 2nd comming.

We also have from this period just before the opening of WWI a resurgents in end of the world themed religions that no doubt had some real effect on this sense of forboding. These religions, I'm sure felt quite justified in their beliefs when the First World War began, giving them some morla support in their beliefs and further adding to the overall forboding / pessimism that was building for the era.

[Scoutcraft Piratess]

I suddenly feel so uneducated! Thanks for posting that!

[mrmatt]

::Shrugs:: Thank CloudMonet, he started this one, I'm merely piggy backing off a good topic.

[AvinashTyagi]

I always thought the words had to do with the post world war one era and the fact that the moderates, the centrists, would not be able to reatin their power and that the world would gravitate towards the extremes, an almost foresahdowing of WW2

[mrmatt]

Nice, I can see that. Does have quite a bit of foreshadow in that light.

[Nueva Paz]

Ah HA! I knew I had heard that line somewhere! We looked at that poem in my lit class in my Freshman year of college. But I don't remember what we talked about in relation with it.

Did Barkin actually say he was in Vietnam? I don't remember him actually saying what war he was in...He did mention the name of a place, I think, but I don't know what it was. He just doesn't seem old enough to have been in Vietnam...my dad was in college during that time (I think), and he's in his 60's, and Barkin doesn't seem anywhere near that age.

I noticed this line when going over the poem again:
"A shape with lion body and the head of a man"
That interested me, because it made me think of the Manticore, a creature in Greek mythology resembling a lion with a man's face and several rows of razor sharp teeth (and sometimes a scorpion's tail). It was said to be a man-eater, and greatly feared. So I wonder if that was what that part refers to.

[zylaa]

According to a few sites the war was 1959 - April 30th 1975. I always pictured Barkin in his 40's. If he said he was in Vietnam in Two to Tutor, which was the second season, that would be Sophmore/Junior year. Which means he would be 48-9 years old.

[teztor123]

I inadvertently posted the same info over in the general KP discussion thread ... ooops, where it was pointed out that the subject had been posted here.

So I thought I'd point out a few things I learned that have been mentioned here.

Working backwards, on Steve Barkin's age, yes he could have been at least in his mid to late 40's but if he really was someone who had been involved in the thick of the war he'd have been in his mid to late 50's or in fact in his 60's.

Theoretically, the youngest he could have been was if he was 17 years old in 1975 - but - (I just checked) he's referred to in that episode as Lt. Barkin. (Of course this would mean that he would never have been the one cooking but then he probably wouldn't have been catching his food with an e-tool either). Being a Lt. he would probably ... (though not certainly as they wanted me to go to OCS when I was 18) ... been a college graduate with at least a years training ... making him at least 23 at the time.

My guess is that Barkin's age as portrayed in the show is ... probably not as old as it should be for someone who fought in Vietnam. He should have more grey hairs ... but then ... Steve has been at various times been portrayed with Blonde hair though mostly it is black ... so maybe he dye's it?

As to the Manticore - my understanding from my reading of Yeats biography (see link below) is that it was The Sphinx come to life that he was referring to.

As to Yeats being Irish Catholic - in fact, he was an Irish Protestant though he lived in the south of Ireland and fought against such laws as the prohibition on divorce which he said would help to permanently separate the north from the south.

A lot was changing in 1919 when he wrote this poem. Up until then the world had been dominated by Empires, the British, the French, the G e r m a n, the Austro-Hungarian, The Russian, the Ottoman. During WWI three of these empires ceased to exist. Communism rose in Russia and much of the rest of the world was in turmoil.

The impression I got was that his poem was written in response to these changes and the effect they'd had on the Europe he grew up in as he was a product of the 19th, not the 20th century. He was born in 1865 and died in 1939 about 8 months before the start of WWII.

I had posted these in the other thread but they might serve here as references to anyone wishing to explore the issue further:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_%28poem%29

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats


As I originally said in the thread I created ... I'd initially intended to post something on this some time ago.

Apologies here for coming late to the game.