The Underlying Message of The Tyger by William Blake
Blake’s legendary poem “The Tyger” is deceivingly straightforward. Though Blake uses “vividly simple language” (Hirsch, 244), the poem requires a deeper understanding from the reader. There are many misconceptions concerning the symbols in “The Tyger” (specifically the tiger itself). This often leads to confusion concerning the underlying message of the poem. Compared to Blake’s “meek” and “mild” lamb, the tiger is hard to accept. It is a symbol for that which people fear. For some, their fears are not reality, and are much easier to ignore than accept. But no matter how hard to accept, the lamb and tiger are equally important, and together create a balance that is ideally healthy for the world. The Tyger can be interpreted through many different theologies, as a form of the sublime, and as an essential part of human life.
Because Blake is ambiguous about the tiger’s nature it is hard to understand. Blake uses paradox to his advantage in the first stanza, which creates an ambiguous effect:
The expressions “forests of the night” and “fearful” have a menacing quality that is negative in nature. On the other hand “bright” and “symmetry” (a sign of perfection) have positive overtones, and are more commonly associated with goodness. Blake has given many clues; and the effect is such that the reader is led to believe that the tiger has both good and evil qualities. The one underlying question that Blake asks of the reader: what God could “dare” (l.24) to create such a creature?
According to the Christian doctrine, there is one God who is the maker of everything. Though there is much argument over how much He partakes in the creation of evil. Nonetheless, this passage is found in the Bible: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7). The tiger could very well be the expression of this God. There are many other beliefs in the world besides Christianity within which the tiger can be proven to reside. Monotheism, for example, is the “belief in a single, universal, all-encompassing deity”(Wikipedia). This deity could also be the “immortal hand” that formed the Tyger. Manicheanism, one of the major ancient religions, uses the theology of dualism as its main principle. The Dualism doctrine can be said to “consist of two basic opposing...
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...he tiger and the lamb.” (250) Ultimatley, the reader must make the decision whether the tyger is a positive or negative part of life.
Works Cited
1. E.D. Hirsch, JR. Innocence and Experience: And Introduction to Blake USA: Yale University, 1964.
2. The Holy Bible containing The Old and New Testaments, King James Version Toronto: Canadian Bible Society.
3. “Dualism”, “Monotheism”, “Christianity”, Manicheanism”, “Taoism” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.
4. Roy P. Basler. “The Tyger: A Psychological Interpretation” Sex, Symbolism, and Psychology in Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1948. 20-24.
5. Morton D. Paley, “Tyger of Wrath”. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Ed. Morton D. Paley. USA: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 68-92
6. “Manicheanism” Encyclopedia of the Orient http://i-cias.com/e.o/manichae.htm
7. William Blake. “The Tyger”, Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. E.V. Roberts and H. E. Jacobs 7th Ed. USA: Pearson Prentice Hall 2004.
8. William Shakespeare, “Henry V” Shakespeare-literature.com
http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/Henry_V/10.html
Bibliography:.. Works Cited Meyer, M., Ed., (1999). Bedford Introduction to Literature, 5th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin.
This is the first stanza of William Blake's famous poem, "The Tyger" which is also featured as the opening paragraph in "The Child by Tiger", a short story by Thomas Wolfe. In the narrative, a seemingly kind, gentle, and religious African American male named Dick Prosser goes on a vicious rampage after drinking excessively and getting in a fight with his love interest's husband (Wolfe 735). At the end of the story, a large mob made up of vengeful White people seeking justice against the "crazed Negro" tracks him down to a riverbank, where Dick awaits them with his shoes at his side and a firearm squeezed dry of ammunition (739). His stalkers gun him down, hang his lifeless body from a tree, pump him full of 300 bullets, and take his mutilated corpse back to down where he is hung in an undertaker's display window for all to see and enjoy (739). What one may not realize while begin to read this story, is that the excerpt from the Blake poem that precedes the tale actually foreshadows the theme. The tiger spoken of in the poem represents the beast that is inside all men. When provoked, a tiger can mutilate and destroy another creature, much like how Dick Prosser's character lashes out and drops bodies all over town with a repeating rifle and hundreds of rounds of bullets (735). "The Child by Tiger" serves as an example that one can only be pushed so far and be put through so much insignificant mental and physical torment before they snap and fight back against their demeaning community.
“The Child By Tiger” inlays a sense of good with evil tailing it as its shadow. In the beginning, Blake’s stanza questions “…who could frame thy fearful symmetry?” Dick Prosser appears to be kind and moral, but later reveals his vengeful side as he chaotically kills people. His conflicts with society inspire the evil to spring forward and divulge himself. The reference to “tiger!” in Blake’s stanza indirectly relates to the fact that Prosser is referred to as a cat through Wolfe’s story. Prosser’s evil self is illustrated as stealthily and smartly stalking his prey; pretending to be the same amongst the others. This evil, Prosser himself, exhibits tendencies of moral goodness as he tries to suppress his situational conflict. Evil stalks a prey smartly; it takes notice of every slight move, and every attempt to through it off fails because it always lands back on its feet.
The symbolism in the poem paints a ghastly picture of a man’s life, falling apart as he does his best, and worst, to keep it safe from himself. In lines 1 through 8 (stanza one), he gives a brief description of an incident in his life where things have gone wrong. “When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind/Repose trust in his footsteps of air?/No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,” He uses these lines to show the lack of control he has over his actions, how his will to change his circumstances has weakened. He is both the hind with the person he is tormenting, and the tiger that
“The Tyger.” Poetry Foundation. Web. The Web. The Web. 2014.
Compare and contrast the poems The Tyger and The Donkey and discuss which poet gives us the clearest depiction of humanity. William Blake is a wealthy, upper-class writer who separates himself from the rest of the wealthy community. Blake has a hate for the techniques used by many of the wealthy, company owners who gain and capitalise through cheap and expendable labour, supplied by the ever-growing poverty in the country. Blake makes a point to try and reveal this industrial savagery through his work. "The Tyger" is presented as a metaphorical approach to the struggle between the rich and the poor; good and evil.
The imagery of nature and humanity intermingling presents Blake's opinion on the inborn, innate harmony between nature and man. The persona of the poem goes on to express the `gentle streams beneath our feet' where `innocence and virtue meet'. This is where innocence dwells: synchronization with nature, not synchronization with industry where `babes are reduced to misery, fed with a cold usurous hand' as in the experienced version of `Holy Thursday'. The concept of the need for the individual's faithfulness to the laws of nature and what is natural is further reiterated in `the marriage of heaven and hell' in plate 10 where Blake states `where man is not, nature is barren'. The most elevated form of nature is human nature and when man resists and consciously negates nature, `nature' becomes `barren'. Blake goes on to say `sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires'. This harks back to `the Songs of Innocence' `A Cradle Song' where the `infants smiles are his own smiles'. The infant is free to act out its desires as it pleases. It is unbound, untainted. Blake's concern is for the pallid and repressed, subjugated future that awaits the children who must `nurse unacted desires' and emotions in this new world of industrialisation. Despairingly, this is restated again in `the mind-forg'd manacles' of `London'. The imagery of the lambs of the `Songs of Innocence' `Introduction' is developed in `the Chimney Sweeper' into the image of `Little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, that curl'd like a lamb's back, was shav'd'.
In conclusion these two poems by William Blake are both deep and have hidden meanings, they both use imagery, repetition, alliteration and ryming couplets as well as biblical references to create a vivid pictures in the readers head. But these poems do differ in many ways such as the structure, theme and way it is written. The Tyger appeals to me most as it has more hidden meanings than the Lamb and the Lamb is boring and as if written by a child (for effect). In this essay I have analysed, contrasted and compared the two poems The Tyger and The Lamb to the best of my ability detailing the poetic devices used and the underlying meanings.
This essay provides a Reader-Response based analysis of William Blake’s “The Tyger.” Following a brief overview of Reader-Response theory, where the subjects of the reader serve to give meaning to text, the essay begins focusing on the contradiction and the division that lives within the tiger itself. Blake’s “Tyger” is simultaneously a beautiful and ferocious creature. From this, the essay moves forward by examining the multiple references to symmetry made by Blake in “The Tyger,” and proposes that these are an overall collection that contains many of the tiger’s contradictions. Moving forward, the essay proposes, within the context of a secondary literature that debates the realism of Blake’s portrayal of the tiger, that while Blake does not represent an accurate tiger in his poem, this is largely irrelevant as the work is focused not on the tiger as an actual animal, but rather on the tiger as a myth of nature. With all of the above in mind, the essay concludes by noting that “The Tyger” is especially open to Reader-Response analyses because of its open-ended portrayal of the tiger as well as its openness to divergent interpretations.
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.
William Blake was born and raised in London from 1757 to 1827. Throughout his early years, Blake experienced many strange and unusual visions, claiming to have seen “angels and ghostly monks” (Moore). For those reasons, William Blake decided to write about mystical beings and Gods. Two examples of the poet expressing his point of view are seen in “The Tyger” and “The Lamb.” Both poems demonstrate how the world is and to sharpen one’s perception. People perceive the world in their own outlook, often times judging things before they even know the deeper meaning of its inner personification. Blake’s wondrous questions actually make an acceptable point because he questions whether God created the tiger with the same intentions as he did with the lamb.
Could there be a creator that has the audacity to create one creature so pure, gentle, and innocent then, in turn, create another creature of a hideous nature, so terrifying that one could be driven to insanity just by thinking upon it? In William Blake’s poems “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” he describes such a creator as this. The reader will find that there are several similarities between the two poems, but in these similarities there are also various differences.
Hirsch Jr., E.D. Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964.
Although Blake’s poem The Tyger revolved around the idea of a ferocious mammal, its illustration of a sheepish tiger complicates and alters Blake’s message in the poem by suggesting that good and evil simultaneously exist. Upon first reading the poem, without any influence from the illustration, the consistent use of harsh imagery paints an animal that is both fearful and wild. Creating an extended metaphor between the creator and a blacksmith, Blake poses the question “What is the hammer? What the chain, in what furnace was thy brain?
During the mid 1800’s was a remarkable era called the Romanticism. Some political and social milestones of this era included The American Revolution, The French Revolution, and The Industrial Revolution. During these events, the “theme” more or less was a type of laissez faire which means, “let the people do as they please.” WIlliam Blake was a famous poet in this time period, as well as Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and George Gordon. Novels and poems were written in this time to express the ways Romanticism was shown and how melancholy was trending.