Analysis of William Blake's A Poison Tree Essay

In A Poison Tree, the speaker has a direct man vs man conflict with another man, and he doesn't deal with it properly, so he ends up killing the man. The ultimate ending of a conflict without resolution is the explosive violence that emerges with suppressed emotion and anger. The conflict which occurred between the speaker and another man was serious enough for the speaker to inflict ultimate damage and reckless violence against his foe. The speaker baits his foe into a trap, describing “And into my garden stole, when the night had veiled the pole: In the morning glad I see my foe outstretched beneath the tree.” The speaker tells of the foe falling for taking the shiny bait which is the fruit of his wrath, and sees the foe dead from the poisonous fruit. The speaker shows no remorse and is happy with the outcome. This conflict is used by Blake in expressing his theme by supporting the result of explosive violence that stems from repressed emotion.

The poem creates the theme that holding in anger may lead to awful consequences through first person point of view by describing the poet’s struggle to release his emotions that eventually cause him to hurt his enemy. For instance, after stating that he told his friend about his anger, and his anger died, Blake says, “ I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.” This quote from the poem shows that this is written in a first person point of view. The poet then goes on to describe how he watered down his anger, and it continued growing. At the end,

Such detail put into the description of these catacombs cause the reader to ponder the awful, and rancid areas that succumbing to your inner rage can take you. Revenge to Montresor brings him through “walls of piled bones”(376), in which to a reader, can thoroughly terrify them and pressure them into not ending up the same way, or not letting their instincts conquer their conscious. Blake uses a very similar imagery, the pleasing display of someone who has fallen due to unsuppressed vengeance. The main character of “A Poison Tree” endures a very conflicting time, a time where his rage becomes a small sapling and he “water’d it in fears”, “sunned it with smiles” till finally his rage was ready and strong enough to explode. This man’s rage envelops him and he finally pleases his rage and murders his enemy, leading to the image of his “foe outstretched below the tree”, otherwise known as the blossomed tree of his revenge. The eventual image of his murdered foe blissfully outstretched below the main character's rage is very difficult to read and imagine without the discouragement of be pushed that far as well, even while that anger may not end in such drastic measures. Describing the scene of the foe below his metaphorical tree put fear into the reader, and makes it clear that the author is attempting the discourage the reader from

The deranged, but brilliant Edgar Allan Poe once said “The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls...” Poe’s notions of the evil within are found in both “The Cask Of Amontillado” by Poe, and “A Poison Tree” by William Blake. The authors write about how revenge can create this insane creature within that will only settle for betrayal and destruction. For example, the speakers in both features are wronged by someone and their way of handling it is deceitful murder. The killers on the outside are characterized as calm people; while on the inside, they are characterized truly as people who enjoy watching those who “deserve it” suffer. Poe and Blake use characterization to convey a theme that man takes violent revenge when they are wronged.

The apple sits on a white plate. The plate has the words ‘For You’ on it. The plate was something I added to the poem. Since the narrator’s enemy knew that the apple belonged to the narrator, the plate shows that the narrator was ready for his enemy to take the apple. The words inscribed on the plate are used to appeal to the enemy to guarantee that he eats the poison. The words are written in black to magnify the toxicity of the narrator’s hatred for their foe. The plate is white to appeal to the enemy. White signifies innocence, purity, and peace. When the enemy sees the plate, they would not guess that it is holding a lethal apple. The grass covers some of the plate up to make the painting more realistic. Grass would naturally get onto the

The wise mind of Mahatma Gandhi once said; “an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” By getting or attempting to get revenge every time someone upsets you, the issue is never fully resolved meaning it could resurface and bite back harder the second time. In ”A Cask of Amontillado”, by Edward Poe, the author uses irony to show how Fortunato’s death was due to Montresor’s hatred. Similarly, in the poem “A Poison Tree”, by William Blake, the author uses figurative language to show how the enemy was killed because of the narrator’s anger. In both texts, the two characters were once friends and the enemies are being deceived. Poe and Blake use figurative language and irony to show how hatred and anger can lead to deception.

Throughout “The Black Walnut Tree”, the speaker is reminded of her forefathers while contemplating her and her mother’s predicament involving the removal of the obstructive tree. In line sixteen, the poem shifts from a negative tone to a more positive one, for the speaker previously talked about the tree’s “dark boughs...smashing the house” before encountering a change in heart which moves her to

Through diction, figurative language and imagery, and syntax, William Blake conveys an intense and curious tone, revealing the doubt of whether or not human power was given by a higher being. The author, William Blake, uses connotation to make his audience understand what the true subject of the poem that he refers to is. For example, the word, “tyger,” in this poem is not specifying an actual tiger, but is used to represent humans. When Blake says, “thy fearful symmetry,” he is giving the tyger the characteristics of strength and power. Humans, as well, are strong and have the potential to create a big impact on the world, just as tigers do in the wild. Overall, the main focus of this poem is who the creator of the tyger is. This is supported with “And what shoulder, & what art/ Could twist the sinews of thy heart” and “On what wings dare he aspire.”

In "London", William Blake brings to light a city overrun by poverty and hardship. Blake discards the common, glorifying view of London and replaces it with his idea of truth. London is nothing more but a city strapped by harsh economic times where Royalty and other venues of power have allowed morality and goodness to deteriorate so that suffering and poverty are all that exist. It is with the use of three distinct metaphors; "mind-forg'd manacles", "blackning Church", and "Marriage hearse", that Blake conveys the idea of a city that suffers from physical and psychological imprisonment, social oppression, and an unraveling moral society.

William Blake was a painter, engraver and poet of the Romantic era, who lived and worked in London. Many of Blake’s famous poems reside in his published collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This collection portrays the two different states of the human soul, good and evil. Many poems in the Songs of Innocence have a counterpart poem in the Songs of Experience. The poem “A Poison Tree” is found in the Songs of Experience and it delves into the mind of man tainted with sin and corruption that comes with experience. In a simple and creative style, the religious theology of the Fall of Man is brought to life. The poem tells the story of how man fell from a state of innocence to impurity, focusing on the harmful repercussions of suppressed anger. Blake utilities many literary devices to successfully characterizes anger as an antagonist with taunting power.

Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and

The poem “A Poison Tree” by William Blake discusses human nature’s true form. Someone who is furious with a friend would obviously want to mend the friendship, so they let their anger simmer. However, someone who is upset with an enemy has no reason to tell him or herself to not be mad because all they are to you is an enemy. Therefore, your hatred eventually takes over and you do something dreadful. This literary composition shows the readers how anger can take a toll in two different directions. The poet writes with such ease, that it makes us readers believe he’s gone through it already.

Writers and authors for centuries have used different strategies to compare living things with one another, as well as non-living things with one another. During the Romantics era, it was a time during economic destruction. People had little hope and writers and poets began to express their emotions as well as critiques on this time period. William Blake was a poet as well as a painter, who wrote works that addressed the social issues around the area in which he lived. The country dealt with several deaths, which caused the nation to go under depression. Furthermore, the essay, Blake's 'Self-annihilation': Aspects of Its Function in the Songs, with a Glance at Its History, by Harold C. Pagliaro, a professor as well as book writer, informs,

William Blake was one of those 19th century figures who could have and should have been beatniks, along with Rimbaud, Verlaine, Manet, Cezanne and Whitman. He began his career as an engraver and artist, and was an apprentice to the highly original Romantic painter Henry Fuseli. In his own time he was valued as an artist, and created a set of watercolor illustrations for the Book of Job that were so wildly but subtly colored they would have looked perfectly at home in next month's issue of Wired.

The meaning of the poem A Poison Tree is how hatred can be a powerful weapon that can lead to both physical and mental injuries if not controlled on time. In the first stanza of the poem the speaker gets angry with a friend and a foe. The speaker seizes their wrath with the friend, however, the speaker allowed their wrath to grow with their foe, “I was angry with my foe; / I told it not, my wrath did grow.” Throughout the second stanza, the speaker grows their wrath with mixed emotions, “And I water’d it in fears, / Night & morning with my tears: / And I sunned it with smiles, / And with soft deceitful wiles.” As the speaker kept growing their wrath, it blossomed to form new anger, new tricks and plans for destruction, “And it grew both day