The Lion and the Lamb

Life is full of opposites. For every black there is a white, for every day there is a night. The poetry of Blake is no exception. His poem “The Lamb” is the opposite of “The Tyger”. That is, the tyger is the predator, and the lamb the prey of the tyger. “The Tyger” conjures an image of being powerful, dark, and dangerous while “The Lamb” brings an image of reassuring peace. Blake uses these opposites to convey his feelings about various world events. At the time “The Tyger” was written, the Industrial Revolution was under way and Blake was upset by all the social injustice in the world. This explains why there are so many allusions in “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” to the Industrial and French Revolutions. Blake used these allusions because he wanted something the readers of his time could relate to and to show how he himself felt about these Revolutions as well. Blake’s dislike of the Revolution leaked out blatantly into his poems.

“What the hammer? What the chain…dare its deadly terrors clasp”? This mention of tools and chains alludes to the Industrial Revolution. The factories were the masters, and the people were its slaves, “chained” and unable to enjoy l

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

In its place, dull and lifeless factories were being built in contradiction to the life that used to live there. Wherever there is evil, somewhere else there is peace.

The structure of both poems is very different and these dissimilar structures help Blake achieve his purpose.

So, what in essence is Blake’s overall point? Is the world going to Hell like he writes in “The Tyger” or is everything peaceful and unified as in “The Lamb?” Perhaps it’s a little bit of both. This gives the poem a calming, soothing result, a slower pace, the feeling of an unworried mind.

In “The Lamb” the line “He is meek, and he is mild” is taken from the New Testament, The fact that there is biblical references in “The Lamb” is inspiring and gives as a sense of hope, a clear shift from the bleak tone and mood of “The Tyger. The first verse of “The Lamb” contains questions and the second the answers, implying that to every question there is an answer, to all unhappiness a moment of happiness will follow. ”

The lamb on the other hand portrays a happier illustration. The straightforward vocabulary and soft alliteration (“little lamb”) that Blake used promote this effect. ” The result if a feeling of disarray, that the world is a confusing place, and there are no real answers, no real truths. ” “The Tyger” has a set rhyme scheme, and the strict rhyme pattern and the swiftly moving rhythm could suggests the orderly marching of the soldiers in the French Revolution. Aside from only the Industrial Revolution, “The Tyger” draws a link to French Revolution, as the revolutionaries where also known as “Tygers.

Approximate Word count = 800
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.