Explication 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 creature is aware of how much strength he possesses and often has moments of pure rage while contemplating the general destruction of all that surrounds him.

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.

For example, in “Infant Joy,” Blake demonstrates the child’s eye and sense of wonder that we find in the incorruptibility of infants. Blake presents a truly pure creature in the first stanza:

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.

Blake had written many poems, but the four I will be discussing are rather unique because of the fact that each one of these poems is a symbol of innocence or experience. The four poems I am referring to is The Lamb, The Tyger, The Chimney Sweeper, and Infant Sorrow. Through my study I had to determined the two poems that were Innocent and the two that were a symbol of experience. Blake's views were on point in my opinion he shows the right balance between innocence and experience. Blake has this view that everything starts off innocent and within time we all gain experience which makes us turn from lambs to tigers. The question is however do we decide if we are more like a lamb or a tiger and in time I do believe we find the answer to that question.

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 third stanza is when the narrator has something physical. He mentions how he has an apple and his enemy knew that the apple was his. The

Blake uses traditional symbols of angels and devils, animal imagery, and especially images of fire and flame to: 1) set up a dual world, a confrontation of opposites or "contraries" which illustrate how the rules of Reason and Religion repress and pervert the basic creative energy of humanity, 2) argues for apocalyptic transformation of the self "through the radical regeneration of each person's own power to imagine" (Johnson/Grant, xxiv), and 3) reconstructs Man in a new image, a fully realized Man who is both rational and imaginative, partaking of his divinity through creativity. The form of the poem consists of "The Argument," expositions on his concepts of the "contraries" and of "expanded perception" which are both interspersed with "Memorable Fancies" that explicate and enlarge on his expositions, and concludes with "A Song of Liberty," a prophecy of a future heaven on earth.

William Blake is one of England’s most famous literary figures. He is remembered and admired for his skill as a painter, engraver, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757 to a poor Hosier’s family living in or around London. Being of a poor family, Blake received little in the way of comfort or education while growing up. Amazingly, he did not attend school for very long and dropped out shortly after learning to read and write so that he could work in his father’s shop. The life of a hosier however was not the right path for Blake as he exhibited early on a skill for reading and drawing. Blake’s skill for reading can be seen in his understanding for and use of works such as the Bible and Greek classic literature.

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