The Tyger Mary Oliver Essay

William Blake is an English poet, painter, and printmaker from the eighteenth century. With his unique way with words and mastery craftsmanship, he created an illustration collection of poems called Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1789. His most famous poems from Songs of Innocence and Experience are “The Lamb and The Tyger”. These poems use animals to attest to God’s role as the Creator, yet they possess contrasting tones and language of the speaker and present conflicting views of God’s power and ability. “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” called me to ask questions of myself, my beliefs, and how my beliefs shape my worldview.

Poetry Essay ENGL 102: Literature and Composition Spring D 2015 Charles Parmenter ID L22851438 Turabian Thesis: The poem “The Lamb,” by William Blake, uses the simplicity of a children’s song to communicate the spiritual truth that God has created everything, and uses this creation to reveal His true nature. I. Introduction II. Content a. Compare stanza 1 with stanza 2 b. Describe theme c. Authors intent d. Readers take away III.

The coexistence of good and evil has caused many people throughout time to question their God and the way the world is. William Blake’s compilation of poems called the Songs of Innocence and Experience questions the good and evil in the daily lives of human beings. This collection of poems includes The Tyger, a partnered poem in the series with The Lamb. Blake offers a new way of interpreting God through His creations in The Tyger. Blake demonstrates the fierceness of the tyger’s creator throughout the poem. The tyger is viewed as a vicious creature that people view as a threat to their lives in many cases. A creature so evil to be created by a God depicted as loving baffles many people, Blake included it would seem.

Blake consistently chooses words that create a feeling of safety and welcoming. In the opening stanza Blake creates an overall sense of well being and comfort. First, he describes the lamb’s setting; Blake illustrates a stream by which the lamb feeds. By doing this right away, Blake subtly incorporates the idea of nature which is characteristic of pastoral poems. Blake views nature as a beautiful work of art which deserves to be appreciated, this is reflected in his choice of the word stream, as opposed to another body of water such as a

They lament the ways in which the intense and harsh experiences of adulthood destroy human innocence while exposing the apparent weaknesses of the innocent perspective on life. “The Tyger,” for example, tries to confront the negative forces in life, while the innocent perspective is not even aware of such forces. These poems also question the inherent “goodness” of love and sexual morality by discussing them as effects of jealousy, secrecy, lust, and shame. In regards to religion, these poems focus much more on the institution of the Church, its role in politics, and its effect on society and the mind rather than individual faith. Blake believes that experience adds a layer to innocence that darkens its hopeful vision, while taking away from its blindness.

“The Tyger,” however, is part of the “Songs of Experience” collection, which revolves more around a “ruthless, ferocious” (Northrop 380) “world of experience” that an “adult” would live in (Northrop 380). Whereas the “Songs of Innocence” are “relatively light and optimistic poems” (Milton), the “Songs of Experience” are much darker in tone and exposing the world as seen in the “Songs of Innocence.” Postulated to be unique in the fact that these two collections were the most intricate of all of his works, Blake's “artistic vision” is clearly shown in “The Songs of Innocence and of Experience” (Curran 256). Being from this volume of Blake's most complex works, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” are commonly thought of as companion poems because of the similarity and opposition found in the two. Each of these poems, read in light of each other, seem to revolve around the topic of religion, as many others found in this particular novel do. Leading to one of the central themes of the piece, it could be considered that Blake's overlaying message in the pieces were about religion. However, despite him being a Christian, albeit “unconventional” in his practice (Evans), the overlaying theme of most, if not all poems in the volume revolve around some aspect of humanity's spectrum. Thus, despite the use of theological logic in part of each poem, the idea of religion is explored with a more rationalistic

Perhaps William Blake’s most famous poem, “The Tyger” was published in 1794 in the collection Songs of Experience. Although the poem differs from the Romantic Era poem in terms of its formatting, “The Tyger” otherwise remains consistent with common Romantic themes such as nature and symbolism. Aside from the Romantic commonalities, the poem also contains a smorgasbord of poetic devices, including allusions, synecdoche, and dichotomies which greatly aid in the effectiveness of Blake’s poem.

The introductory question of William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger”, “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?” poses the single most significant proposition of the poem, and each ensuing stanza aids in embellishing this conception. Blake is constructing his argument on the premise that nature, like an intricate piece of art work, ultimately in some way is a reflection of it’s creator. Although the tiger is remarkably beautiful, it also possesses a dreadful capacity for violence. Blake is asking what kind of a God, could or would create such a horrific monster as the tiger. The tiger, fundamentally, is a metaphor for the undebatable reality that evil and violence exists in the world. Blake is questioning the nature of God, and

This must have been gathered from the way Blake uses simplistic verses involving allusions to the lamb of the bible or, “Jesus Christ” as children are often taught. However, what this view fails to acknowledge despite the poem’s effortlessness is the level of vocabulary such as words like “mead”, “vales”, and “meek”. These words may at first not appear very difficult, but when seen from the eyes of perhaps an eight year old, they may not completely grasp the full picture.

Why did God create both gentle and fearful creatures? Why did God create a world with bloodshed, pain and terror? "The Tyger" by William Blake, written in 1794 and included in his collection "Songs of Innocence and Experience", takes readers on a journey of faith. Through a cycle of unanswered questions, William Blake motivates the readers to question God. Blake sees a necessity for balance in the world, and suggests to the readers that God created a world with a balance of good and evil so that humanity can see goodness more clearly through contrast and comparison. This theme is achieved through the poem's imagery, figurative language, and structure.

William Blake, a prominent poet in the late 1800s, wrote some of the most meaningful pieces that are still looked at today by many. Poems are unique because they must arrive to the point while also compacting all of the necessary literary devices needed for a concise message. William Blake does just this especially in his contrasting poems The Lamb and The Tyger. The poems The Tyger and The Lamb along with their literary devices coexist in order to create romanticism and to convey William Blake’s important contrasting messages of innocence and power.

Blake’s poems are simple and lyrical in form, but there are complex works too, which needs the reader to work hard to understand what Blake means. This complexity is due to the presence of mythological in addition to the philosophical sources present in his work. Blake himself has stated that he had to "create a System, or be enslaved by another Man's.” this reasons the presence of vague thoughts and allusions in his work. The reader has to struggle to apprehend Blake’s perspective on the issues of religion, faith and belief. The efforts put to understand Blake’s works will assist the readers to know the revolutionary and visionary artist and poet whose works

The Eighteenth-century British Romantic, William Blake, was an accomplished painter, engraver, and illustrator during his lifetime, but is best remembered for his poetry. Though Blake’s genius was generally dismissed by the public of his own era and he died with little acclaim, he has since been regarded as one of the greatest figures of the Romantic Movement. Whether with paint or pen, Blake is renowned for his ability to create works of art which, over the years, have succeeded in both amazing and perplexing his audience. “The Tyger,” from his 1794 “Songs of Experience” collection, is one such poem whose elusive meaning is widely debated. The work becomes problematic for readers since, when

William Blake’s 1793 poem “The Tyger” has many interpretations, but its main purpose is to question God as a creator. Its poetic techniques generate a vivid picture that encourages the reader to see the Tyger as a horrifying and terrible being. The speaker addresses the question of whether or not the same God who made the lamb, a gentle creature, could have also formed the Tyger and all its darkness. This issue is addressed through many poetic devices including rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism, all of which show up throughout the poem and are combined to create a strong image of the Tyger and a less than thorough interpretation of its maker.

William Blake was “the most spiritual of artists”; he once said his life and work are a confusion of contraries: infinite patience and painstaking workmanship in the dawn of the Industrial Age: The dawning of mind – forged manacles in an age of rules, emotion in an age of reason; other – wordly presences involved in this world’s work; genius called madness.