The Lamb and The Tiger by William Blake

'The Lamb' and 'The Tiger' by William Blake

Write about The Lamb and The Tiger by William Blake. Explain how

the poet portrays these creatures and comment on what you consider to

be the main ideas and attitudes of the poet.

'All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.'

Cecil Frances Alexander

Indeed, God created all creatures great and small, and he could not

have created two creatures more different from each other than the

lamb and the tiger. The question arises in one's mind therefore: -

'Could one creator design and give life to two exhibits of such a vast

contrast?'

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William Blake certainly poses this question in a somewhat clever

manner in the two examples of his work that I've analysed and

compared, namely 'The Lamb' and 'The Tiger'.

In the two collections of his work, namely Songs of Innocence and

Songs of Experience, he has several contrasting poems that bring the

two states of being described by both collections under the

microscope. As one of the early Romance poets, Blake was writing in

opposition to the rapidly changing, revolutionary eighteenth-century.

Essentially, that opposition developed into an appreciation of the

emotions, as opposed to reason ant intellect, and a recognition of the

purity and innocence which childhood represents in contrast with the

corruptions and in-authenticity of adulthood, with its learning and

experience of life. The English Industrial Revolution played a very

influential role in William Blake's work.

Songs of Innocence includes a reversal of the expected 'hierarchies'.

The poems reject t...

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...ecessary self-knowledge. The Lamb develops into the Tiger -

innocence is the price that must me paid to attain an identity in

'grown-up land'. It has to sacrifice its meek, mild, gentile innocence

to become the Tiger of Experience prowling the 'dark forests' of life.

In conclusion, I feel William Blake is attempting to transmit an

important message: never mind how innocent we are during our naïve,

happy playground days, the big bad world is awaiting us all, and we

have to stop resisting and accept that we're all going to develop into

Tigers at some point - gaining our own unique symmetry in place of our

soft, delightful, tender selves. Life past, present and future poses

many questions - it's up to us to answer them, to discover our true

identities, and to decide where exactly our faith lies. Innocence is

the foundation upon which experience is built.