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William Blake and religion
Comparative analysis of The Tyger and the Lamb by William Blake
The lamb and the tyger analysis william blake
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The poem “The Tyger” by William Blake is a poem about two different personalities. The Lamb is the innocent mankind, whereas the Tyger is a much more wild, mysterious and ferocious animal capable of great good and terrifying evil. The author of this poem William Blake is a man who takes pride in knowing about his religion. He has written this poem in his collection of poems called Songs of experience. In this poem he talks about creation of evil. The poet uses a very powerful rhyming scheme along with a lot of Allusions referring to both Christian views of God, and Greek/roman God’s and Goddesses throughout the poem. The poem itself presents a sort of strange view on one central question that he repeats twice in the poem referring to the evil of the Tyger. “Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
The Speaker has used ‘Tyger’ and ‘Lamb’ to describe them. The Lamb is the innocent mankind, whereas the Tyger is a much more wild, mysterious and ferocious animal capable of great good and terrifying evil. The poet has supported this idea by saying “Tyger Tyger, burning bright”, the words he has...
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.
In Blake’s poem “The Tyger,” the creature is not only a symbol but a creature being immortalized by the author’s idea of him. Blake paints a literary image of the animal by describing his “tawny” coat against the darkness of the forest; “Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night.” He discusses the creation of the tiger through the questions “Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” At the time, Lamb was a parallel to Jesus Christ. The Romantic Age was about human creation and moving away from traditional beliefs; therefore Blake’s references to other kinds of craftsmanship such as the pounding “anvil”, the “furnace” and “hammer” are implying that the bright animal was molded by human creativity and art, not a God’s. The boldness of declining existence of an omniscient God during the late 18th century only goes to further display the theme of rebellion and breaking away from orthodox ways.
In Blake’s work “The Lamb,” he shows innocence through sheep and their nature. Blake describes sheep’s nature by saying that they “Feed/By the stream & o'er the mead/ have thee clothing of delight/ Softest clothing, wooly, bright” (Blake 4-6). This passage shows that sheep are providers to man and do no harm. Blake says that sheep have a “tender voice/ making all the vales rejoice?” (Blake 7-8).
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 ideas that are presented in poems are often the same ideas everyone is thinking but are too afraid to speak their mind for fear that they might be judged. Allen Ginsberg explained this predicament when he said “[p]oetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private” (Ginsberg). This quote applies especially to “The Tyger” by William Blake. William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” at the surface is very simplistic; however, with further analysis the story’s theme of religion asks fundamental questions that pertain to one’s worldview with the use of symbolism.
all the hunted animals convey connotations of evil, and this is doubtless the reason why the author of the poem seems so involved in the outcome of the hunts and never tires of triumphantly describing the final slaying of the pursued animals. (Howard 85)
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.
All of these poetic techniques work together to create imagery that shows the Tyger as malicious and evil, and the question of whether or not God could create such a monster is never completely answered. Through evaluating this poem the reader comes to understand that it is not truly about the Tyger, but about its maker. Even with so many literary devices used to enhance the reader’s understanding, the final question is still left with no clear response: did the same God who shaped the Tyger also form the Lamb?
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?
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.
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.
William Blake, a romantic poet in the late 1700s, wrote a collection of biblical poems, called The Songs of Innocence and Experience. In this collection, Blake wrote a six-stanza poem consisting almost entirely of questions, titled “The Tyger”. Blake addresses this “Tyger” throughout the entire poem, beginning by asking who or what immortal creature made the Tyger. Blake then describes the Tyger as a fearsome and evil creature and tries to understand how the person who made the Tyger could have continued the process once it’s horrible “heart began to beat” (Blake 11). He compares the creator of the animal to a blacksmith, asking if the creator used an anvil and hammer to create the creature or other tools. Towards the end of the poem, Blake
middle of paper ... ... Through symbolism and reference, Blake’s “The Tyger” effectively portrays civilized human existence. Although “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” appear to be fairly different in subject matter, both poems include a deep, indirect portrayal of Rousseau’s noble savage myth. Also, both poems include a variety of romantic ideals.
Comparing The Lamb and The Tyger by William Blake Of the many poetic works by William Blake, "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" show a large amount of similarity, as well as differences, both in the way he describes the creatures and the style he chose to write them. The reader will find many similarities between these two poems. Both of them discuss the creation of the creatures by God. The line "Little Lamb" who made thee a king?" and "What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry" clearly shows that the poet is referring to a being who is capable.
The Tyger and The Lamb both use lots of imagery to illustrate their points about life. On one hand, The Lamb