The Other Side Of Holy Friday

In the poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," William Blake uses symbolism, tone, and rhyme to advance the theme that God can create good and bad creatures. The poem "The Lamb" was in Blake's "Songs of Innocence," which was published in 1789. "The Tyger," in his "Songs of Experience," was published in 1794. In these contrasting poems he shows symbols of what he calls "the two contrary states of the human soul" (Shilstone 1).

William Blake was a complicated writer as well as a complicated person. As a kid, he never attended school because his parents thought he was abnormal. William spent a lot of time talking about his dreams of Christ coming to him in the night. He learned how to read as well as write at home, but William wanted to go to an actual school. His parents decided to send him to an art school where he learned how to paint. William’s parents couldn’t afford school so he apprenticed an engraver for seven years. Working in churches doing engravings gave William the inspiration he later used in life to write all of his poems. If you read William Blake's work you will understand that most, if not all of his work is about Christ, as well as what Christ can do for us. You will notice in my comparison of his works ¨The Lamb¨ and ¨The Tyger¨ both closely relate to Christ along with what the heavens are about.

The main idea that Jane Shore is making in "High Holy Days" is that the child or young teenager is a "Chosen One," (line 54) and she must free the Jews from Anti-Semitism and the Nazis just as Moses saved the Israelites from the Egyptians. She had no idea she was going to be the chosen one just as Moses did not. Moses was lost too just like she was before God helped him find his way. Jane Shore uses diction, tone, and imagery in order to convey the main idea.

In this essay I am going to be looking at two poems from the Songs of innocence and experience works. These poems are The Lamb and The Tyger written by William Blake. Both these poems have many underlying meanings and are cryptic in ways and both poems are very different to each other. In this essay I will be analysing the two poems, showing my opinions of the underlying themes and backing them up with quotes from the poems. I will compare the poems looking at the similarities and differences between them and also look at each one individually focusing on the imagery, structure and the poetic devices William Blake has used. Firstly I will look at the Tyger a poem about experience.

The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of

William Blake was deeply aware of the great political and social issues during his time focusing his writing on the injustices going on in the world around him. He juxtaposed the state of human existence through his works Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), showing differentiating sides of humanity. The contrast between Songs of

“The Lamb” in Songs of Innocence, and “The Tyger” in Songs of Experience were written with biblical influence, and Blake demonstrates his biblical upbringing through out these poems. “The Lamb” is represented through a pastoral story line, allowing a connection with agriculture and nature, much like many stories in the Bible. “The Tyger’s” storyline, however introduces the question of theodicy, or why there is evil in the world. How can God make a lamb so innocent and pure, and in turn create something so evil and cruel? Throughout “The Tyger”, Blake asks hypothetical questions,

Being one of the most influential poets during the Romantic Period, the religious status of Blake has long been as controversial as his own literary works. Nonetheless, the fact that he is indeed a Christian is doubtless - such can be easily illustrated from many fragments of his works such as ‘I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little Lamb, God Bless thee! Little Lamb, God Bless thee!’ from his poem The Lamb. This singsongy excerpt from the Song of Innocence not only appears to readers as Blake’s direct praises of God but also an evident reference to ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’(Eg. Psalm 23) from the Holy Bible. However, it can also be easily argued that Blake is not an ordinary, churchgoing Christian. A great portion

Families attended church feeling safe and secure because no one ever died in church. Her mother knew if her daughter participated in the march that she may not make it home as the chance of death was present, so she sent her to the one place she thought she would be safe. Her daughter was to be at no risk attending church and singing in the choir unlike the march as it was a chaos of violence. Therefore, the fact that the child died in a church bombing instead of at the Freedom March is nothing but irony, and it shapes this poem entirely. The one place that is sacred ended up being the burial ground of a child who would have been safer at the march, and who would have made it back home to her

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.

In his work, Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, William Blake uses the aforementioned contrasting states of being to illustrate his unique view of the world around him. Through this work, Blake lays bare his soulful views of religion and ethics, daring the reader to continue on in their narcissistic attitudes and self-serving politics. While Blake's work had countless themes, some of the most prevalent were religious reform, social change, and morality. Philosophically, one would think that William Blake was a Deist; however Blake rejected the Deist view of life. He was a devout Christian, yet he also wanted nothing to do with the church or their teachings. These views give Blake a

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

Critics of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience not surprisingly have focused their attention on the galaxy of characters whose voices are heard throughout Blake’s poems. Along with the cacophony of voices of London’s disenfranchised—the men, women and children, the chimney sweeper or the harlot who thronged London’s streets and whose piteous cries became the object of Blake’s concern, the two set of artistic manifestation portray a seamless blending between innocence, a gradual loss of innocence and finally a metamorphosis into a higher state of innocence. In addition to the spoken voices there runs throughout the Songs an undercurrent of silent voices—voices that can be inferred, or as Blake would say, imagined—which speaks no

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.

Some of William Blake’s poetry is categorized into collections called Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake explores almost opposite opinions about creation in his poems “The Lamb” and “The Tiger.” While the overarching concept is the same in both, he uses different subjects to portray different sides of creation; however, in the Innocence and Experience versions of “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake uses some of the same words, rhyme schemes, and characters to talk about a single subject in opposite tones.