Read "The Second Coming" and answer the question. The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats 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, 5 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; 10 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, 15 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 20 Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? What is the central theme of the second stanza? A) People fear what they do not understand. B) Society has created many of its own problems. C) The approaching beast is an all-powerful entity. D) Looming disasters are seldom preventable.

The central theme of the second stanza in W. B. Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" is B) Society has created many of its own problems. This stanza introduces a vision of a nightmarish creature with a lion's body and a man's head, which alludes to the sphinx. This creature signifies a monstrous revelation resulting from the chaos and the anarchy mentioned in the first stanza. Yeats's imagery here suggests not just a return to primal forces but a cyclical nature of history where the civilizational order gives way to darker, primal chaos, indicative of society's own failings and the consequences it must face.

Extra: "The Second Coming" is a poem by William Butler Yeats, written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and at the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. The poem's pervasive sense of disintegration and chaos reflects the poet's perception of the world at that time. The first stanza depicts a world losing its coherence with "the centre cannot hold," suggesting the crumbling nature of the societal order. In the second stanza, Yeats portrays a vision of a "rough beast" as a symbol of a coming age. By invoking the image of a "rocking cradle" that vexes the creature from its "stony sleep," Yeats suggests that the horror of the coming age is a direct result of historical forces - the societal upheavals and the violence that has rocked civilization. The phrase "Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" provides a stark contrast to the Christian image of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Christ, the Savior, instead suggesting the arrival of an ominous entity—a force generated by the collective sins or errors of society, as reflected in the chaos and loss of moral direction seen in the first stanza. Thus, the poem deeply criticizes the modern age, prophesying a resurgence of primitive forces as a consequence of the societal breakdowns and moral decay.