Sons of Anarchy: What is a Widening Gyre?

If you've been asking yourself, what is a widening gyre and what the hell does it have to do with Sons of Anarchy, you're not alone. My SAT vocabulary went right out of my head as soon as I finished taking the exam. A bit of Googling reveals that a gyre is a vortex that usually occurs in nature like a cyclone, hurricane, or an ocean gyre (that swirly thing in the middle of the picture above). It seems to me that for Sons of Anarchy, the widening gyre is this perfect storm of Abel's abduction, problems with the Irish, relationship problems for Jax and Tara's tru lurv, the brewing problems with the Mayans, and the people of Charming turning on SAMCRO. When you add it all up, how much worse could it get? Much worse, I'm sure. 


But wait! There's more. And it's literary. Apparently Kurt Sutter has been reading Yeats. W. B. Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1919 that essentially a post-apocalyptic view of the world in advance of the second coming. Sure he wrote it as an allegory for post-war Europe but read it's much more fun to read it in the context of Sons of Anarchy--particularly because the previous episode was titled Turning and Turning. Take a gander for yourself: 

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 Spritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the 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 towards Bethlehem to be born?

At first glance anarchy loosed on the world suggests that SAMCRO is going to Ireland. The bloody tide means that this vortex of violence, consequences, and revenge is going to be deadly. Innocence gone? Perhaps this suggests that Jax will no longer idolize John Teller after he gets a more realistic picture of the man. The good losing their conviction and the bad are strong and willful--does this mean that SAMCRO's enemies might triumph this time? 


What do ya'll think? The comments section awaits.