the tyger
Through life there is an ongoing balance between good and evil. In William Blake's poem "The Tyger", the tiger's divine parentage is constantly questioned. "Did he who made the lamb make thee?"(20). The speaker is perplexed how the same immortal creator could derive both the docile lamb and the fiery tiger who vividly contrast each other. Common in Blake's poems are views of "the two contrasting states of the human mind." In this poem Blake has chosen a sinister and menacing beast against a pure and innocent creature to show the variation. There is an immortal body in the universe making a balance of innocence and experience, good and evil, which enables mankind to function. There is a bit of "Tyger", or what it symbolizes, in all of us. Adam and Eve chose to eat the forbidden apple when they were instructed not to. Adam was then expelled from the Garden of Eden, into the "forests of the night" (2) after he listened to the evil snake. The "tyger" represents that irrational voice that dwells inside our
It is quite bizarre that the speaker never suggested that the tiger shouldn't have been created only the question of who is proposed. The suggestions made by this imaginary figure are sometimes dangerous and have repercussions yet at the same time appealing. heads that we all listen to at some point in our lives. Each poem represents an extremist view of the two states of the human mind and it is somewhere in between the two poems where an equilibrium is reached. Was the creator, or author in Blake's case, proud if his own work? We know today that Blake's poems were ignored during his lifetime and only 50 years after his death, Blake's brilliance was discovered. Blake most likely intended for each reader to take on their own meaning in "The Tyger," making it a complexly structured poem, while in "The Lamb", Blake does not leave any thoughts unanswered. When Blake modifies the line in the last stanza from the first "Could frame thy fearful symmetry" to "Dare frame thy fearful symmetry" he suggests that the speaker has become progressively worried about the morality and logic of the creator. It is how we perceive the tiger that makes the animal vicious or gorgeous. The speaker says, as if he were speaking to the creator "In what furnace was they brain?" questioning who would create such a quality. "The Tyger" uses rhetorical questioning along with symbols to lead the reader to their own conclusion. Blake wrote "The Tyger" as a follow up to "The Lamb" and he intended the two poems to be compared to each other. This is not the same immortal that created the lamb, this immortal is a hard laborer who moulds a beast of "fearful symmetry" (4) in his fiery furnace. The lamb is much like a child that is still innocent, while the tiger is similar to an adult who is experienced and has been exposed to the harsh realities of the world. The immediate and simple answer achieved in "The Lamb" leads to a calmer mood and a straightforward poem.
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Acceptance Essays
