Speaker and characters

In this section of the guide, you can read useful information as concerns the characters and narrator of “Easter 1916” by William Butler Yeats.

The speaker

The main character in the poem – and also the speaker – is a persona of the author, of Yeats himself. Yeats was an Irish nationalist, but he chose not to become actively involved in the political movements of his time. The purpose of the poem is for Yeats to come to terms with the Easter Rising and the deaths of many Irish revolutionaries, as well as his desire to understand whether the Easter Rising was a good idea or not.

Initially, he the speaker comes across as rather superior and distant regarding the people he meets on the streets or at the club. Although he talks to them, he speaks “meaningless words” (l. 6), which means that he does not care about their true problems:

I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words, (ll. 5-8)

Although he always has a good story “to please a companion” (l. 11), his habits soon disappear, as “all changed, changed utterly”” (l. 16).

When he depicts some of the people involved in the fight, he seems to see them as “ignorant” (p. 18), “sensitive” (l. 29) or “drunken, vainglorious lout” (l. 32). On the one hand, this indicates that Yeats does not see them as suitable to be part of the Irish cause. On the other hand, he may see himself as far more superior than they, as he was not directly involved in the conflict. Whatever the reason, Yeats still finds it necessary to mention them in his poem, and he lists them in the end:

I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly...