The Tyger And Tiger's Head Poem Analysis

When it comes to art and poetry, there are more similarities than people may think. Both mediums share common values, as seen in William Blake's poem "The Tyger" and Abbott Handerson Thayer's painting Tiger's Head, which both depict a type of division. In "The Tyger," a religious separation is evident, while Tiger's Head portrays a separation between good and evil. Although both works show types of separation, they differ in the specific types involved. Abbott Handerson Thayer's painting Tiger's Head portrays a Sumatran tiger's face in the grass at night. The tiger's dark brown eyes are slightly widened, and its ears are flattened, giving it a look of faint surprise. On the left side of the oil painting, the colors are brighter, giving the appearance that the left side of the tiger is in some sort of light, like a camera flash or a brief spotlight illuminating its face. As you progress to the right side of the painting, the colors become darker until it becomes black when you get all the way to the right. The right side of the tiger's face is dark, almost black, creating shadows on the right side of its face, giving the tiger a slightly scarier appearance.
The light side is believing in God while the dark side is not believing in God, and the in-between place is where you are confused about whether there is a God or not. William Blake's "The Tyger" discusses the tiger and continually asks what God could have created such a creature. He describes the tiger as deadly and strong with "fearful symmetry." The poem is a rhyming poem, with the ending of the lines rhyming. The poem is made up of mainly questions and little answers. There are many religious references in it, and it is very broad in the sense that it doesn't answer questions but rather asks them. The first and last stanzas are the same except for one word. In the first stanza on the last line, he states, "Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" In the last stanza on the last line, the word "could" is replaced with the word "dare," changing the line into "Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" This could be because he wonders who could have dared to create such a frightening monster. He then asks, "And when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand?
The light and dark in the painting can be alluded to as a separation of good and evil, which could then be alluded to as the separation of religion, as the light could represent believing in religion and the darkness not believing in religion. While they share similar separation issues, they are also different. The light and dark in the tiger painting merely allude to the separation of good and evil, while the poem shows a clear understanding that there is a religious separation and questioning of whether or not there is a God or Gods. The light and dark in the painting can be interpreted as religious separation as well since the light could represent believing in God and the darkness could represent not believing in God, and the middle part where it is not just light or just dark is where someone doesn’t know what to believe. William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” and Abbott Handerson Thayer’s painting Tiger’s Head both show acts of separation. In the poem, the separation is religious, while in the painting, the separation is between good and evil with a slight religious separation. The tiger in both pieces of art symbolizes humans. In the painting, the tiger is shown half in light and half in darkness, like a human who puts up a façade and a mask hiding what they truly are. The poem alludes to the fact that humans question whether or not there is a God or Gods and that there are many different ways that they can go. One way is to believe in one God, like Christianity or Catholicism.