Short Poem "The Tyger" Essay

William Blake’s most famous poem and has led to several different interpretations by critics and other poets. The firat and last quatrain are the same except for when the word "could" becomes to "dare".

Theological tyranny is the subject of The Book of Urizen (1794). In the prose work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93), he satirized oppressive authority in church and state, as well as the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish philosopher whose ideas once attracted his interest. Blake’s main concept was imagination and many people questioned if he was brilliant or just completely insane. William Blake was influenced by many great thinkers of his day, and was well aware of the conflicts that were arising between science and the arts in his era. In his work, he makes sure to define reason and explain how it differs from passions. He even assigned personalities to represent the conflicts and characteristics of these definitions in his poetry and art. There have been many men who loved to speculate the future. William Blake was one of these men, and if he spoke incoherently and obscurely, it was because what he spoke had never been discovered before. He announced the religion of art, which no man had ever done before him, and he understood it better than anyone else.

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.

In this poem, each stanza is made up of two couplets. These couplets because of their steady going rhyme, reminds the reader of the Tyger’s heartbeat, beating as we say the words as Blake intended them to be read. Blake states what words he thinks are the most important to the poem by using repetition. Repetition plays a key role, for example the word “dread” is repeated many times throughout the poem, particularly in lines 12 and 15. Every time Blake repeats this word it adds emphasis to the word or phrase its used in, contributing to the image of the Tyger in each readers mind.

What does it mean to be human? William Blake, an 18th century English poet, artist, and philosopher asked these questions, often masqueraded under a wall of color, and rhyme. Through seemingly childish, almost nursery-esq poems, Blake teases us to think about who we are, and ask ourselves things that challenge who we are as a species. Often his poems were sister pairs that mirrored each other in theme and appearance. For example, his poem “The Lamb” a poem about innocence and divine creation, is mirrored by “The Tyger,” a look at experience, and a subtle inquiry at why the divine creator of the lamb, would create such an evil as a tiger. The same can be said about two of his other poems, “The Chimney Sweeper” and “Infant Sorrow,” whose themes deal with again, innocence and experience, in a Taoism manner of thinking. Blake uses archetypes of innocence and experience in “The Lamb, “The Tyger,” The Chimney Sweeper,” and “Infant Sorrow.”

Through a mysterious tone, William Blake’s “The Tyger” reveals religion by using syntax and imagery. Throughout the story Blake uses literary elements to create the tone of the story. Blake first uses syntax to create a mysterious tone in the sentence, “Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” What Blake means by this is who made the Tiger. The author’s curiosity is shown throughout the poem.

During this time William Blake voiced his opinion against “oppressive institutions like the church or the monarchy, or any and all cultural traditions-sexist, racists, or classist-which stifled imagination or passion” (The Tyger). Many scholars viewed “The Tyger” as a dangerous piece because dances with religious dogma. However, this poem is one of Blake’s many mirroring pieces of work. He wrote this poem in conjunction with his other poem called, “The Lamb.” “The Tyger” was written for Blake’s poetry collection called Songs of Experience.

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.”

The verbs in the questions change from “Could” to “Dare." Then the questions change from "What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?" to "What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? " Blake states towards the end of the poem,

poem’s theme is about how both bad and good can be created by one person. William Blake uses contrast of describing the light of the tyger as things that are not usually associated with light. He says “Tyger Tyger, burning bright” and “What immortal hand or eye/ could frame thy fearful symmetry?” The speaker also says “in what distant deeps and skies/Burnt the fire of thine eyes?” and “What the hand, dare sieze the fire?” This shows how the author is baffled by who would dare to mess with something so fearful in its light.

The Bible states, “For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16). William Blake wrote poems about this very subject. In his twin poems, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”, Blake uses different literary techniques such as sound, imagery and symbolism to echo the common theme of creation along with how it is viewed differently.

For these reason, both poems are related by their abscence of comprehension of existential matters,or shortly the Sublime. In 'The Tyger"

'The Tyger' asks who could have made the tyger. More exactly, it is asking who could have made such an evil being as the tyger. It begins with the question the poem is based on What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?, and throughout the poem, the question is asked in different forms . And what shoulder, and what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart?.

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.

is a representation of the relationship between creator and creature. This poem may be one of his more popular poems from The Songs of Experience. In the poem, Blake writes about how the Tyger was created by the same immortal being who created the sheep. In this case, Blake is referring to God creating both good and evil in the world. Blake depicts this by this excerpt from the poem, ?the contrast between fire and night ? [which] corresponds to the contrast of yellow and black stripes ringing the Tyger itself [sic].?8 John E. Grant comments that William Blake?s poem is ? ? horrifying, as well as awesome, to think of an animate thing being hammered into shape in the smith.?9 Through this statement, Grant is referring to the creation of Tyger and the rest of humanity by God. The hammer merely being an instrument of creation.10 It is strange how much Blake speaks of God and creation as a whole, as he was not religious or a believer in one God, creator of the