How has Blake depicted the tiger in this poem?
At the very start of the poem it is clear in what way Blake wishes to
portray the tiger. The first words he uses -"Tiger! Tiger!" is an
aggressive start to the poem thus implying that Blake is trying to put
the tiger across as an aggressive animal.
The next two words, "Burning bright" give the image of power and awe.
This added to the next two lines,- "What immortal hand or eye, could
frame thy fearful symmetry?" with words like 'fearful' and 'immortal'
reinforces the tiger's image of power and strength and its God-like
qualities of immortality and omnipotence.
The next stanza gives the tiger an almost mythical status, with the
line "In what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes?"
This gives the reader an image of the tiger being some legendary
creature from the stars, this coupled with the image of the burning
eyes adds another degree of god-like power to the creature commanding
more awe and fear.
The third stanza gives the reader the image that it took enormous
strength to "Twist the sinews of [its] heart. The stanza finishes with
the lines "What dread hands and what dread feet?" conjuring quite
blatant ideas of dread and extreme fear associated with this mystical
beast.
The fourth stanza reinforces the creation imagery of the previous with
the images of the tiger's creator being compared to a blacksmith
giving the idea of the tiger being forged out of metal. "In what
furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? Etc"
The penultimate stanza gives the final idea in the poem with the
almost apocalyptic imagery of 'stars throwing down their spears'
giving the tiger an even more awe-inspiring quality. The stanza
finishes with "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" Which gives the
idea of disbelief at the prospect of a creator making a harmless
pleasant creature such as the lamb and a dangerous mighty and awful
creature like the tiger.
b) Explore the ways Blake uses imagery and repetition in this poem.
The most obvious repetition in this poem is the "Tiger! Tiger!"
repetition. This, as I mentioned before, gives the poem an aggressive
start and almost sets the scene for the rest of the poem, having the
readers anticipate an almost violent and powerful poem.
This line appears in the first stanza and in the final stanza where it
is repeated, save for one word. In the final stanza the lines "What
immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry" Are replaced
by the line "Dare frame thy fearful symmetry." This gives the idea of
This gives the effect that although there is mass devastation, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, in this case for the eagle, the leftover remains of a carcass. However, as seen throughout the poem this isn’t the case for everyone and everything as the dead or dying clearly outnumber those prospering from the drought. This further adds to the miserable and discouraging mood of the poem. Other poetic devices are also used during the course of the
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
“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.
Though the way it relates to people in the 19th century and the way it relates to the modern world greatly differs, the symbolism in the poem and shift in tone throughout it shows a great appeal to human nature, and how desperate one can be to change it. 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 into 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.
is a poem about the nature of creation, much as is his earlier poem from
This idea is expressed prominently in John Foulcher’s For the Fire and Loch Ard Gorge. For the Fire entails a journey of someone collecting kindling as they witness a kookaburra kill a lizard, Foulcher represents his idea through the use of metaphor, “a kookaburra hacks with its axe-blade beak.” This metaphor represents the beak in weaponised form, as it is compared with a violent axe. This evokes a sense of threat and intimidation towards the kookaburra, which contrasts to societies general interpretation of the ‘laughing kookaburra,’ thereby challenging the reader's perceptions of beauty in the natural world. Also, this comparison of the kookaburra offers a second understanding for the readers to interpret of the kookaburra. Similarly, in Loch Ard Gorge, Foulcher uses strong visual imagery, “savage dark fish are tearing their prey apart, blood phrasing the water decked with light,” to communicate the violence of the ‘savage’ fish to readers in a visual, gruesome manner. Thereby evoking a feeling of disgust towards the situation, as a visual description of blood is shown and Foulcher uses provoking, gruesome adjectives to communicate the fish's brutality. Foulcher expresses these ideas to communicate the abilities of nature, and provide a necessary ‘reality check’ for the readers, to review the beauty they see nature and understand the barbarity at the heart of everything. Although ruthlessness and brutality that nature can show are unintentional and immoral, this harm is a large part of the cycle nature needs to survive and thrive, and these factors can counteract assumed beauty and
It is in lines 10 – 24 that the poem becomes one of hope. For when Blake writes “As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins and set them all free;” Blake’s words ring true of hope for the sw...
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.
After reading both, Sharon Olds, "Rite of Passage" and Adrienne Rich, "Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers" the two poems are not very similar. In the “Rite of Passage”, the narrator, known as the mother (Olds), is witnessing difficult children, and rage at her son’s first birthday party. On the other hand, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger”, focuses on the struggles in an unhappy marriage. The poems both included messages that deal with relationships shared with individuals, closest to you. Although, both poems do not share a common similarity, I have identified an issue among the two poems. “Trust can never be regained fully” is an issue that can be identified amongst the two poems.
Blake was angered by what he saw in his homeland as other countries started fighting for their independence and equality whilst his country stayed dormant, even though he felt that there was a serious need for serious action. Even though Blake wasn't a typical romantic writer, he too possessed the same. beliefs of fighting for what one believes in, and the urge to be. liberated from the oppression of society. So, by being a writer of the romantic period, watching a controlled and restricted society not showing an intent to break free and fight against the monarchy.
Blake also uses sound to deliver the meaning to the poem. The poem starts off with "My mother groaned! my father wept." You can hear the sounds that the parents make when their child has entered this world. Instead of joyful sounds like cheer or cries of joy, Blake chooses words that give a meaning that it is not such a good thing that this baby was brought into this world. The mother may groan because of the pain of delivery, but she also groans because she knows about horrible things in this world that the child will have to go through. The father also weeps for the same reason, he knows that the child is no longer in the safety of the womb, but now is in the world to face many trials and tribulations.
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.
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?
This invokes reassurance in the reader. William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” also asks the ultimate question “What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?/” (Blake lines 3-4). The tone of this poem is more of a horrific nature.
...ofession is viewed as a joke to Blake and we can see this here. This whole idea is exacerbated by the use of imagery present in the poem that is achieved through the use of dark imagery. This attitude of the poet is against the one of the speaker who believes he is innocent and free and had the ability to play around and display hope in his dreams.