Symbolism In The Tyger By William Blake

The Tyger” takes a unique look into the human soul in comparison to a tiger. This poem was written for Blake’s 1794 collection entitled Songs of Experience which contained

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.

The first stanza begins with questions and the second answers these questions. Mr. Blake uses the simplest of lines and the innocents of a child’s heart to communicate the theme of God’s sovereignty and His intelligent design. His intent is to display the positive attributes of the Christian faith, and to communicate this truth to many. My takeaway from this poem is that God, in His sovereign will, and infinite wisdom, chooses to use His creation in magnificent ways, in order to reveal His true nature to believers.

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?

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 the poem “The Tyger” by William Blake, the use of rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism all help the reader understand the theme and what was going through the authors thoughts while writing. William Blake was a mystic poet who channeled his thoughts and questions to write poems. He questioned the creator of both the Tyger and lamb, how could the same God create a destructive creature like the Tyger and on the other hand create a gentle animal, the lamb. This ties into the theme of the poem of how a God could and would create a monster like the Tyger.

In order to exist in nature and in human, innocence requires experience. The author, William Blake divided his poems into two volumes which are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. “The Lamb” is the poem from Songs of Innocence and “The Tyger” is from Songs of Experience. In “The Lamb,” Blake writes in an incomplex, childlike way asking an innocent lamb who made it. In “The Tyger,” Blake asks who could have possibly made something as formidable as the tiger. William Blake uses archetypes in his poems “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.”

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 "The Tyger," William Blake's syntactical strategies include interrogative sentences along with rhetorical questions of who made "The Tyger" and why. "The Tyger" starts with a simple question of Blake asking, "Tyger, tyger... What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry.” Rather than asking a question and receiving an answer, "The Tyger" asks a continuous set of questions, none of which are clearly answered. Later on, the questions asked in the poem have a slight shift.

Looking at a powerful animal in fascination sends a lot of questions through one’s head. Even with God’s amazing design, this wonder can easily be switched to dismay. William Blake, the author of “The Tyger,” fulfills this interpretation of wonder. In this poem, the speaker seems to be watching a Tiger with great interest. Noticing how much power this animal possesses, our main character states a question as to why God would make such a perfectly dangerous creature. Moving forward in the poem, this question remains unanswered.

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 style of Songs of Innocence and Experience is simply direct, but the rhythms and language are often deeply complex. Many of the poems are narratives, but some like, “The Sick Rose” use symbolism and abstract concepts to deliver a message. Blake often uses Biblical symbolism and language in his writing. He seems to enjoy applying simple, nursery rhyme meter to his unorthodox conceptions. This combination of familiarity with the unfamiliar is what keeps Blake’s work perpetually interesting (Erdman, David V. Complete Poetry and Prose. New York, 1982.

A reader's own understanding and interpretation can impact his or her capacity to separate the author's explanation from the texts vigorously loaded down with biblical allusion and symbolism by analyzing the speaker’s answered and undecided questions in the poem. The lamb represents innocents and purity whereas the tiger represents power. People can experience the nature of the world and creator’s creation through Blake’s use of biblical allusion and symbolism. "The Tyger" comprises totally of undetermined questions, but the lamb answers all its questions with in the poem. While the lamb inferred God's kindness and benevolence, the tiger proposes his savagery and force.

“So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (New Living Translation, Gen. 1.27). William Blake, in his poem “The Divine Image”, uses multiple literary techniques, such as personification and repetition, to portray his idea that man and God share many of the same divine qualities. He later wrote the poem “A Divine Image”, which contrasts with the first by discussing the negative aspects of human beings. These negative characteristics are emphasized through the use of metaphors and, again, personification. Although the same rhyme scheme is used throughout both of the poems, the structure of each varies greatly adding to the opposing ideas set forth in the second poem.

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.