In today's modern world the tiger, the largest member of the felid (cat) family, is often revered as a fearsome and beautiful animal who's brightly colored and pattern fur attracts poachers throughout southern Asia. In William Blake's poem, The Tyger from the Book of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the "tiger" is more than just an animal with large claws and teeth. William Blake uses the tiger as a symbol which represents the fierce some force of a human's soul, Blake's own personal philosophy, and the counterpart sister poem to "The Lamb." Some would say "The Tyger" is a romantic poem written by William Blake before his time of romantic literature. The "Tyger" becomes a symbol for the extremeness force in the human soul. This fierce
The poem, The Tyger, contrasts innocence and experience, and good and evil. The description of the tiger in the poem is as a destructive, horrid creature. The original drawing on the poem shows a smiling, cuddly tiger which is quite the contrast to the tiger described in the poem. This picture might suggest a misunderstanding of the tiger and perhaps the fears that arouse from the poem are unjustified. This poem contrasts the tiger with a lamb which often symbolizes innocence, Jesus, and good. The tiger is perceived as evil or demonic. Blake suggest that the lamb and the tiger have the same creator and in a way states that the tiger might also have the ability to have the benign characteristics of the lamb. The tiger initially appears as a beautiful image but as the poem progresses, it explores a perfectively beautiful yet destructive symbol that represents the presence of evil in the world. In the poem, Blake writes: " What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry (4-5)." It is hard to determine if the tiger is solely evil or good.
According to Blake this creature has a special "inner" source of energy which distinguishes its existence from the cold and dark world of inanimate things (Blake 3). There is also an essence of the devil in the tiger. William Blake points this out by using words like furnace and just by him picking a tiger. There are many other violent predators out in the jungle but he chose the tiger because of its bright orange and black. When it runs it looks like a fireball. In line twenty of "The Tyger," William Blake says, "Did He who make the lamb make thee?" (Blake 539). What he is wondering is if he made such an innocent creature like the lamb how could he make a beast like the tiger?
Poem analysis of ‘The tiger revisited’ by Gordon J.L Ramel In today’s civilization, there are many problems that people feel uncomfortable speaking about. However, poets have created a way of communicating their ideas to the world through poetry. Poets use their poems to express their values, beliefs and attitudes about significant issues that shape their identity. In the poem ‘The Tiger revisited’ by Gordon J.L Ramel, Gordon uses a range of poetic devices to raise awareness of tiger extinction because of his attachment to them.
The first line in the poem says, “Tyger Tyger, burning bright.” By Blake repeating the word Tyger twice, it feels to the reader as if we are speaking directly to the tiger. The
Tyger is a poem that strongly focuses on the concepts of religious beliefs and nature. The poem is made up of six stanzas all asking questions about how god could create such a thing and when he started, how he could continue to create such a beast. The first and last stanza of the poem are the same except, instead of asking who could create tiger he asks who dare create the tiger. Blake compares the creator to the blacksmith and uses the beat of the poem to represent god hammering the tiger into existence. Through out this poem Blake asks why god could create such a thing of beauty and sorrow and how humans could live in a world with both beauty and horror. This poem focuses on nature and god making it a great example of how romantics were influenced by their
From the beginning, the tiger is questioned about his existence, “What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” Blake continues to asks, “On what wings dare he aspire?/ What the hand, dare sieze the fire?/ And what shoulder, & what art/ Could twist the sinews of thy heart?” This example presents his belief of creation, and distrust in religion. The tiger presented becomes a unique symbol representing Blake’s investigation of evil in this “pure” world.
Poems can have multiple meanings to them, often times offering inspiration. A poem about the miracle of eternal life can generate a feeling of awestruck wonder. Another about the power of God’s abundant creatures uproots many questions of how God designed such magnificence. God sent the Lamb, Jesus Christ, to save us from our sin which acts as a wall separating us from God. Christ died on the cross for all people and because of this, fences will be replaced with unity. Creation glorifies God with beautiful mystery in William Blake’s “Tyger Tyger”, as a gift meant for eternity in John Donne’s “Death, be not Proud”, and as unity with God with no barriers in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall.”
The setting of the poem is abstract "forest of the night" and "distant deeps or skies", which makes the Tyger and Him be in the spotlight. The Tyger is described with imageries of fire: it is "burning bright" and in its eyes "burnt the fire". The beast is ferocious, wroth, and dangerous just like the fire itself.
He has chosen a tiger to represents himself because of its conflicting qualities: noble but violent, graceful but wild, intelligent but cruel. In a way, these conflicting qualities are
The poem “The Tyger”, written by William Blake, was effectively described and delivered through the usage of sound devices. The most prominent sound device used throughout this poem is rhythm. Throughout each verse and stanza, the poem continuously follows the AABB pattern with its rhythm. This is exemplified through the following stanza:
William Blake’s The Tyger and The Lamb are both very short poems in which the author poses rhetorical questions to what, at a first glance, would appear to be a lamba lamb and a tiger. In both poems he uses vivid imagery to create specific connotations and both poems contain obvious religious allegory. The contrast between the two poems is much easier to immediately realize . “The lamb” was published in a Blake anthology entitled “The songs of experience” which depicted life in a much more realistic and painful light. Both poems share a common AABB rhyme scheme and they are both in regular meter. In “The Tyger” Blake paints a picture of a powerful creature with eyes of fire and dread hands and feet. He asks rhetorical questions with a respectful awe that is almost fearful and makes the setting more foreign to the reader by including imagery like “the forest of the night” By contrast. Blake’s portrait of the lamb is one of innocence and child like wonderment “The Tyger is almost an examination of the horrors in the world while “The lamb examines only that which is “bright,”tender, “mild”. The use of words like “night,” “burning’ and “terrors in the tyger”create quite a contrary image for the reader than that of “The lamb.”
The archetype of this poem focuses on how aggressive and vicious the tiger is. It also can be seen as a more physical comparison such as, “Tyger Tyger, burning bright,” (line 1, page 749). Blake says the tiger is burning bright, but does not mean this literally, for he is comparing the color of the tiger to the color of fire. Blake does insult God for creating the creature because all it does is kill and destroy. The tiger also has more power. In which, the Songs of Experience poems are related to those that are leaders, fighters, and that are more outspoken; therefore, The Tyger fits more perfectly with that collection of
William Blake was known to be a mystic poet who was curious about the unknowns in the world, and strived to find all the answers. Does God create both gentle and fearful creatures? As a questioned asked in the poem “The Tyger” William Blake pondered on why an all-powerful, loving God would create a vicious predator, the Tiger, after he created a sweet, timid, harmless animal, the lamb. The theme of this poem surrounds this idea of why the same creator would create both a destructive and gentle animal. This issue is brought up and discussed through rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism.
William Blake depicted the tyger as the malevolent beast, to make the reader apprehend the beauty of God’s creation. “And what shoulder, and what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart?”(Blake 9-10).The tiger is mighty and innovative to fight off negative energy, such as ignorance. The heart being twisted represents how people are corrupted in their own
However, unlike his son the father is unable to reach his wife, “But tho’ calm and warm the waters wide/ I could not get to the other side” (line 15-16). In Blake’s poetry, adults are often portrayed as corrupted. Here the father and son represent Blake’s vision about the experience of adulthood and childhood. This belief of light vs. dark is prevalent throughout the poem for in the second stanza it is revealed the young boy's mother stands among the lilies showing her to be pure, and in the third stanza the young boy is compared to a dove, an animal of