The Serpent Inside of Us
Human beings, along with the ability to reason and question, possess the capacity to hate, and yet also to forgive. Unfortunately, forgiving someone is not always as easy as holding a grudge against them, and this lack of control over one’s actions is inherent to human disposition. In many of his poems, William Blake critically observes human nature and its different aspects, but in “A Poison Tree”, he specifically discusses human weakness and the effects of humans’ inherent flaws. Through the use of extended metaphors and vivid imagery, he compares two opposing forces in human beings. In “A Poison Tree”, William Blake uncovers the inherent weakness in humans by symbolically portraying characteristics of good and evil. The first stanza introduces a comparison between a friend and a foe through clever parallelism. Blake begins his poem by writing “I was angry with my friend: / I told my wrath, my wrath did end” (1-2). He continues to say “I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow” (3-4). The similarity of lines 1-2 and 3-4 acts as a parallel comparison, with the first part depicting forgiveness, and the second part portraying wrath. The parallelism makes the two opposites stronger, for it emphasizes t . . .
Rather, he lives in fear, specifically fear of his actions, which would produce the “poison tree”. Thus it is also tempting to his enemy, and Blake continues by saying “he knew that it was mine” (12). All the fear and deceit that Blake was living in helped grow this apple, which is as poisonous as the hatred that he held. Again, Blake makes a reference to the Bible, in which Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, leading to their demise. The darkness of the night is representative of Blake's role as the serpent, for the black night enables his evil side to emerge and tempt his foe. One side of him is able to forgive, but the other side is not, and this weakness takes over and affects his judgment. Obviously, Blake's foe ate the apple from the poison tree, and therefore perished. Again, one may observe that Blake is symbolically acting as a serpent, but not consciously, for he does not explicitly tempt his foe with the apple. he differences between them: letting go of his wrath and it ending, as opposed to suppressing his anger and it growing. This is the first point of human weakness that Blake conveys. In the next stanza, Blake continues the symbolism of the apple tree, which he “waterd … in fears, / night & morning with my tears” (5-6) and “sunned … with smiles, / and with soft deceitful wiles” (7-8). Using evidence from later on in the poem, one notices that Blake acts as the serpent, tempting his foe with an apple. Therefore, he plants the seed of hatred, which, observing from the title, grows into “a poison tree”. His foe, therefore, is oblivious to the hatred that exists between them.
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