In Blake's “The Tyger” the lamb and the tiger
will to many be associated as the symbols of good and evil, but with a closer
analysis, in the context of the historical events it came into writing, the
good and the evil becomes more intertwined and harder to separate.
The poem which I have chosen is “The
Tyger” by William Blake, from “Songs of Innocence and Experience” written in
1794. To help me with proving my statement
I will use the levels of reading
literature from William Withla (2010, p. 42-56): content, form, argument/theme
and context.
Content:
One of the major ideas and themes in this poem is to construct an image
in the mind of the reader of an animal on this planet which have been give
immense powers, and how the creator dared to get the ingredients and stir the
mixture to make such an animal. The speaker wonders mostly about the creator
and questions the tiger somewhat rhetorically, because it is impossible to get
an answer from the tiger. The feelings that arouse when reading this poem are
instinctual and commonplace at the same time. The fear and shuddering when
thinking of a tiger, with its killer instinct and sharp claws. These feelings
can be contributed to the human reactions of commonplace. The instinctual
feelings are the wondering and the awe-inspiring sight that the speaker in the
poem paints of the daring creator.
Structure:
The poem consists of six quatrains with four trochees in each verse,
with its falling duple. With an AABB end-rhyme pattern. The verse is
tetrameter. The poem consist of a mixture of run on and full stop verses, with
no certain pattern, but the rhythm is simple and holds a dramatic effect. The
rhymes used are masculine or single strong rhymes, where the rhyme sound is on
one accented syllable (bright/night, spears/tears). The poet has used
alliteration with the use of the w-sound (twist, watered, threw) and the softer
sound of the word “what”, and also with the recurring use of the soft “s” and
“f” (deeps, skies, smile, furnace, fearful, forest). It softens
up the language, but at the same time it stands in contrast with the very firm
and steady rhythm, giving it a very sensual and comforting tension.
Paraphrase:
Paraphrased the poem is about a person questioning the tiger, about the
person who could create the tiger. The speaker refers to this creator as an
“immortal hand or eye”. The tiger is described as a creature with a “fearful
symmetry”, with a characteristics of something “burning bright”.
The first question that rises in the readers mind is who the speaker is.
In “Introduction”, the first poem of “Songs of Experience”, we are introduced
to the “Bard” who sees the past, the present and the future. So the speaker is
not Blake himself. A bard is a poet, or one who recites poems about heroes, usually
the poem will be sung, the recitation of poems was not from reading, but from
memory. So we know that the bard is some ancient person, but not the creator
himself. The bard is not the grown up
child who is the speaker in “Songs of Innocence”. The bard in Blake's songs
might be hired by earth itself, questioning the purpose of not only the living,
but also God. In the first stanza we are introduced to the creature, as one
stalking in the night. Blake sets the mood and the feeling at once. The creatures
that lurks at night “in the forests”. It is commonly known that most
night-creatures are carnivores and lives of the flesh of other creatures,
attacking from nowhere. An antithesis occurs in the use of something “burning
bright” in the “night”, light and darkness at the same time. One might ask why
the bard asks the tiger itself, but it would only be natural, because it is the
tiger that would know, but God is also omnipresent, but cannot speak through
the tiger. So the bard and the tiger is earth-bound, the bard is not somekind
of over-natural being, just a very experienced and very old poet on earth.
Coming back to the rhetorical questions one might say that the bard only
asserts the things he asks. “What immortal hand or eye”, here the bard is
asserting that the tiger is made by an immortal or in this instance God. It is
possible to use the eye as a symbol of the beholder, as a insight to the mind
of God, so the question, also somewhat rhetorically, that is raised is what
kind of God “could frame” the “fearful symmetry” of the tiger. So the first
stanza paints two characters that stage the poem, the tiger and God.
The speaker continues to question the qualities of the tiger, and who
made him, this is ongoing in the whole length of the poem. The speaker asks in
what “depths or heights” the qualities of the tigers eyes were gathered. Also
on what “wings” this was possible, and with what “hands” dared to “seize the
fire” which burns in the tigers eyes? In this stanza Blake uses an antithesis
by writing “distant deeps or skies”, high and low. He asks where he got the
soul for the tiger, the fire in the eyes as a symbol for the soul, the
intertwined soul of God and the tiger. The skies as a symbol for Gods heaven,
and deeps as a symbol for hell. “On what wings dare he aspire”. Aspire meaning reaching for, or be brave
enough. One might say the bard questions Gods ulterior motive about the
creation of the tiger. Wings may be a symbol for an angel, or an angel with
darker ambitions. The wings, depths and heights might also be seen as the Greek
mythological story of Icarus and Daedalus. The wings of feathers and wax
Daedalus created for his son Icarus to escape the labyrinth created by Daedalus
himself for the evil king Minos. Daedalus said to his son not to fly to close
to the sun and not to close to the sea, but Icarus flew to close to the sun and
fell into the sea and drowned. The lesson of this story is of moderation, and
the bard asks if God knows his own limitations. “Dare” is emphasized through
repetition, questioning the courage and will of God.
In the third stanza the speaker questions more the qualities of the
creator of the tiger, with less stress on the actual tiger. What “shoulder” and
“art” could make the strong muscles that is needed in the heart of the tiger,
but also the power of God, the muscles as symbols of strength and power. And
what “dread hands or dread feet” dared touch the tiger further after giving it
life? This stanza along with the fourth can be seen as an comparison with God
as a craftsman. One can imagine an artist sculpturing something, the shoulder
moving with strength to mold the heart, acting as the main force for the hand.
“Heart” may be a symbol for the spiritual, emotional and moral of the tiger.
“What dread hand? & what dread feet?”. This works as an antithesis, again
it is high and low. “Hand” is repeated three times, but also the words
“clasp/grasp” may also be acting as a “hand”. The hand acting is the main
symbol of God, and it emphasizes God as a craftsman. Why “feet”? It may suggest
that God is standing firm, he does not regret creating this animal, and it is
with purpose.
In the fourth stanza the speaker compares the creator with a blacksmith,
with “hammer” and “chain”, “furnace” and “anvil”, and the strength of a
blacksmith. The speaker again asks who dares, to create the tigers brain and
grasp “its deadly terrors”. The “hammer” acts as the force and strength of God.
The “chain” may be seen as a symbol of the will, or it may be used as a symbol
of the process of creating. The links of a chain coming together to form the
chain itself. The “furnace”, with its heat and fire, and burning intensely is
very much linked with the tigers colors, burning bright, but also linked with
the fire in the tigers eyes, so one might say it is the symbol of the soul. The
“anvil” is one of the key elements here, it acts as the opposite force of the
“hammer”, the opposite strength of God, or of something darker. They act as an
antithesis.
In the fifth stanza the speaker asks if the creator smiled upon his work
when “the stars threw down their spears. And watered heaven with their tears”.
The speaker asks the tiger if his creator is the same who made “the
Lamb”. “When the stars threw down their spears. And Watered heaven with their
tears.” This is the part which has proven the most difficult to explicate, but
if one sees the rest of the stanza in comparison one would think that the stars
laying down their spears as a metaphor for God putting his final touch on the
creation of earth, and smiling and resting on the 7th day of
creation. Or the stars throwing down their spears can be a symbol or a metaphor
of the king of France giving up his powers. And watering heaven with their
tears might be a metaphor of the darkness that the crown of England saw coming.
The last verse of this stanza is the part which can connect this poem to “The
Lamb” in “Songs of Innocence”. When the speaker asks the tiger if his creator
is the same who made “the Lamb”, it works as an antithesis, the lamb and the
tiger are as far apart as night and day. Here one might also see the wonderful
decorations Blake and his wife made for the poems in the songs. The tiger is
framed in darkness, lurking under a tree and the lamb is reaching out to a
naked child on a sunlit background. In both poems the lamb is a symbol of
Jesus. This can be said because Blake emphasizes the lamb with a capitol letter
L, but also because of the poem“The
Lamb” works as a opposite poem to “The Tyger”, as an innocence and as an
experience.
The sixth stanza frames the previous stanzas and repeats the first
stanza with its question of “what immortal hand or eye” created the tiger. But
the speaker changes the last question and asks who “dare” to create the tiger,
and not “could” as in the first stanza.
Why is the word “could” suddenly substituted by “dare”? If we see the
first and last stanzas as frames for the poem one might observe a change in the
attitude the bard has for God. It starts more innocently and ends in a sense of
awe and a little bit of fear. The reader and the bard is still left in the blue
of God's real intentions. Why has God made made a world where one of his
creations is food for the next? The tiger might be a symbol for the royal and
aristocracy of Great Britain, living of the rest, the Lamb a symbol of the
poor. There are of course many more questions that come to mind after reading
this poem, but the one which is most clear is the question of what kind
of God could make such a powerful animal and make the rest inferior?
Context:
One could read “The Tyger” in the context of the work which it was
published, in “Songs of Innocence and Experience”. This poem is a part of the
“Songs of Experience”, which can be described as the bards view of the world
through eyes of experience and adulthood. And the “Songs of Innocence”
expresses the innocent and naive view of the world, with a very cheerful view
of the creation, from a child’s perspective. As I have mentioned before “The
Lamb” from Songs of innocence stands as an opposite force to “The Tyger”, or at
least as another view of faith. The child asks here the lamb who made it,
and the child itself responds and tells the lamb, that it was Jesus that made
thee. The same question is risen in “The Tyger”, but the questioning of the
creator, God/Jesus exhibits a much more darker view of the world, the
antithesis of the tiger and the lamb and the rest of the antithesis’s used in
the poem reflects the duality the bard sees in his creator.
And the social context here is in Blake's world, Great Britain in the
year of 1794, so in an historical context this poem has come to us in the
historical era of major revolutionary workings. Only two years prior the
Republic of France has been proclaimed, one year prior to the execution of the
French king, and in the year of major clashes between French forces and British
forces. One might compare the tiger as a scary picture of the influence which
the crown of England held at the time, and the firm hand the crown held over
its inhabitants in the aftermath of the revolution. In this period the
revolutionary ideas spread, and a lot of Brits could see themselves becoming a
part of a republic, as America had won their independence 20 years ago, and now
the every day to day dealings with America were of trade and commerce.
Anti-Jacobian politics by the crown made it dangerous to proclaim support, or
agitate for support of the French revolutionaries. Blake himself had attended
various republican meetings, “and read and sympathized with a number of leading British radicals”
(Whitla, p.55). Or one might see the tiger as a creature filled with purpose,
and a metaphor of the Jacobian movement as one righteous path to salvation of
Great Britain, and the fear of the tiger was a fear one could find in the halls
of power, not the people. One might see the crown and the Jacobian movement as
two extreme opposites, but that could also be said for the lamb and the tiger.
So the poem might be a response or a reflection over the propaganda the crown
and the Jacobian movement presented to the people. If the tiger is a symbol of
the french revolution the poet asks the reader to take make up his or hers
mind, a rhetoricly says that we have to be in awe og the people that dared to
stand up against the king, appointed by God. Did God smile when the tiger made
the stars give up? Did God smile when the French threw their king down? Jesus,
the Lamb, tried to make a world for his people in a peaceful matter. The Tiger,
the french people, used war and death as a means to salvation. They are both
accepted by Blake, but through the bard he expresses an agreement to use force
when necessary.
Sources:
Stillinger, Jack and Lynch, Deidre Shauna (2006), Greenblatt, Stephen
(editor) “The romantic period” The Norton Anthology: English Litterature, 8
ed. Volume 2 London New York, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Whitla, William (2010). The English Handbook: A guide to Literary
Studies Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell
PS! Remember to cite your work!
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