William Blake 's The Lamb And The Tyger

In “The Lamb” by William Blake, you will see that, if analyzed closely, the lamb is a personal symbol which signifies God himself. The innocence of a child is like that of a lamb, and serves as a model for humans to follow. In the first stanza, the speaker is the child who is also the teacher. The child asks the lamb who gave him life and all his needs, along with a voice so "tender”. Then, the child declares that he will tell the lamb who their creator is. The creator shares the same name as the lamb, which is a reference to Jesus Christ. The end of the poem is giving way to a blessing which, gives an expression of the child’s adoration at the connection the lamb makes in child,

To begin with, Blake’s use of repetition intensifies the significance of our creator and all he has done for us, as well as the sacrificial giving of life, food, and clothing as would a parent sacrificing for a little child. Blake’s reoccurrence of the questions, “Little Lamb who made thee?” and “Dost thou know who made thee?” shows the importance of creation of the little lamb. He answers the questions repetitiously by saying, “Little Lamb I’ll tell thee, Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!” (Blake, 1988). The answer continues on in the

The voice in this poem is one of pure happiness and innocence. In this state of joy, the infant is unaware of the world in which he lives and that awaits him. In these opening lines, we see Blake revealing the everyday modeling and structure that categorizes the world, but is absent in the simplicity and purity of childhood. The child has no name because joy needs no other name. Labeling and classification are products of organization and arrangement that the world uses to assimilate innocence into experience. Blake demonstrates that it is through this transition, that the virtue of child’s play is destroyed. Blake utilizes specific emotions such as “happy,” “joy,” “sweet,” “pretty,” “sing,” and “smile” to describe this uncorrupted state of being. There is no danger, darkness, or struggle for the infant. Instead, he exists in a care free state, free of guilt, temptation, and darkness. The birth of a child is celebrated by Blake and it stirs in us powerful emotions of peace, love, and hope.

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 analysis of this poem, we find the symbolic association the Little Lamb and Jesus Crist, The Lamb of God.

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.”

This story was places after The Lamb in our book to show the difference between people and how personalities can change. There are the ones that are truly innocent and give off more of the lamb feel, then there are one more like a tiger that are powerful and sometimes angry. “And what shoulder, & what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart?” (The Tyger pg.749). This tells us that unlike the lamb the tiger is more of a angry, hard to handle person.

The language in The Lamb is used to portray a child-like sense, “Softest clothing wooly bright.” The young boy describes the lamb to be “tender” and “mild” much like himself. The simple and direct tone of this poem provokes a feeling of innocence as indicated by the question the boy asks, “Little Lamb who made thee/Dost thou know who made thee.” Whereas, the question asked in The Tyger is more complex in thought, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?/What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” The language used in The Tyger such as, “fearful symmetry” and “In what furnace was thy brain?” is more elaborate and illustrative in order to imply experience in

Have you ever wondered what animal you would be considered as? A lamb, that is pure and innocent or a tiger that is experienced and mean. William Blake, an English poet demonstrates in four short stories, examples of innocence and experience; in which he calls “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”. In the novels, The Lamb, The Tyger, Chimney Sweeper, and Infant Sorrow, Blake uses two archetypes in those poems.

The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores the Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the child is also associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for children, and the Bible's depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless and vulnerable. These are also the characteristics from which the child-speaker approaches the ideas of nature and of God. This poem, like many of the Songs of Innocence, accepts what Blake saw as the more positive aspects of conventional Christian belief. But it does not provide a completely adequate doctrine, because it fails to account for the presence of suffering and evil in the world. The pendant (or companion) poem to this one, found in the Songs of Experience, is "The Tyger"; taken together, the two poems give a perspective on religion that includes the good and clear as well as the terrible and inscrutable. These poems complement each other to produce a fuller account

There are two significant texts within this module that can easily be described as poems that portray the clear relationship between innocence and experience. These poems are The Lamb and The Tyger by William Blake. These texts can be compared together to allow for their the relationship to be dissected, with the texts being described as a pair, although coming from the two separate collections that they can be found within; these collections are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The collection of the Songs of Innocence were written in 1789 portray child-like hopes and beliefs from either adult or the child themselves’ perspective in each poem of Blake’s, with this collection being predominantly based on childhood and child narrators. However, the Songs of Experience collection contradict these by portraying fears and the negative elements of the world that come with experience and adult life. This ultimately allows for many of the poems to form couples among these collections, such as these two given texts. Therefore, allowing for the relationship of innocence and experience within these examples to be closely examined. With this essay aiming to do so, in order to show this relationship openly through Blake’s use of symbolism and imagery with the aid of other interpretations to ultimately discuss this relationship in-depth.

“The Tyger” is arguably the most famous poem written by William Blake. The lines are short and straightforward, organized into six stanzas of almost equal length. The lines that may be viewed as longer, however just somewhat, occur in the middle of the poem, in the third stanza, due for the most part to word length and not as much too increased number of metrical additions. The sentences in the poem are for the most part subordinate consisting of long strings of words that build more details of the image as the sentence goes on. An example is in the first stanza:

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.