While I am fairly certain most of us are
bored with Blake’s “The Tyger” after countless readings in various English
courses, I have always found this very brief poem to be interesting and oddly
endearing. While many people may find William Blake’s work in Songs of
Innocence and Experience to be a tad juvenile, I personally feel there is
something captivating about his accessible writing style—specifically in this
collection of poems. I also enjoy that “The Tyger” is unlike the other poems we
have encountered this semester, as it is lacking in narrative movement.
Containing six stanzas at four lines
apiece, “The Tyger” is a poem made up of questions—which helps add to its
intrigue. The speaker desires to seek answers for only a few questions, but
they all pertain to the existence of the tiger. By asking such simple questions
with such frequency, I have always believed the speaker to be guileless, much
like a child. As children do, the speaker poses a plethora of questions and wishes
to know who made the tiger, where was it made, why was it made, etc.
Tiger:
The Tiger itself is used to represent evil or perchance even fear. One could argue that the tiger is a metaphor for the devil when comparing it to Blake’s lamb, but I have always felt that it is perhaps a bit more ambiguous than that. With the powerful and chant-like lines “Tyger Tyger, burning bright! In the forests of the night;” (1-2, 21-22) I believe that Blake wants us to sense the raw extraordinary energy of the tiger. An animal as large and powerful as a tiger is a relatively intimidating image, and was probably considered an "evil" animal during Blake's lifetime, as it would have been a very rare specimen to encounter.
The Tiger itself is used to represent evil or perchance even fear. One could argue that the tiger is a metaphor for the devil when comparing it to Blake’s lamb, but I have always felt that it is perhaps a bit more ambiguous than that. With the powerful and chant-like lines “Tyger Tyger, burning bright! In the forests of the night;” (1-2, 21-22) I believe that Blake wants us to sense the raw extraordinary energy of the tiger. An animal as large and powerful as a tiger is a relatively intimidating image, and was probably considered an "evil" animal during Blake's lifetime, as it would have been a very rare specimen to encounter.
While
continuing on throughout the poem as Blake builds the suspense through increasingly
intense questions, with the most striking questions posed being “Burnt the fire
in thine eyes?” (6) and “Could twist the sinews of thy heart?” (10). With the
questions becoming progressively more hostile, its begins to become more
evident that the speaker is trying to guide us towards feeling the intensity of
the tiger they are envisioning, and to experience the unbearable fear that
comes when you face something so
terrifying.
Religion:
While this poem has undeniable religious aspects with lines like “what immortal hand or eye” (3) and even the capitalization of the word “lamb” (20), the aspect of the poem I find to most confusing is that “he” is never capitalized. I am certainly no religious expert, but I have always seen references to god as “He” or “Him” treated as a proper noun and are printed/written with a capitalized H. I feel this could be a very subtle way that Blake has chosen to partially deny this higher being, as he feels that someone who created something as innocent as the lamb would not also be capable of creating such a wild beast (or perhaps I am grasping for straws here).
While this poem has undeniable religious aspects with lines like “what immortal hand or eye” (3) and even the capitalization of the word “lamb” (20), the aspect of the poem I find to most confusing is that “he” is never capitalized. I am certainly no religious expert, but I have always seen references to god as “He” or “Him” treated as a proper noun and are printed/written with a capitalized H. I feel this could be a very subtle way that Blake has chosen to partially deny this higher being, as he feels that someone who created something as innocent as the lamb would not also be capable of creating such a wild beast (or perhaps I am grasping for straws here).
Central ideas through the use questions, stanza
by stanza:
1st stanza: Central question of the poem – who could have made such a beast?
“Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (4)
2nd stanza: Where was the tiger made?
“On what wings did he aspire?” (7)
3rd stanza: How was the tiger made?
“What dread hand? & what dread feet?” (12)
4th stanza: What tools (for lack of a better term) were used?
“What the anvil? What dread grasp.” (15)
5th stanza: What was the creator’s reaction to their creation?
“Did he who make the Lamb make thee?” (20)
6th stanza: Reiterate central question from first stanza w/one word change for emphasis (“Could” to “Dare”) (line 24)
1st stanza: Central question of the poem – who could have made such a beast?
“Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (4)
2nd stanza: Where was the tiger made?
“On what wings did he aspire?” (7)
3rd stanza: How was the tiger made?
“What dread hand? & what dread feet?” (12)
4th stanza: What tools (for lack of a better term) were used?
“What the anvil? What dread grasp.” (15)
5th stanza: What was the creator’s reaction to their creation?
“Did he who make the Lamb make thee?” (20)
6th stanza: Reiterate central question from first stanza w/one word change for emphasis (“Could” to “Dare”) (line 24)
Some questions to consider:
1.
Does
anyone disagree and believe the poem is more straight-forward than I have interpreted
it and is actually about the devil himself?
2.
What
do you think is the significance of the single word change in the final stanza?
Also, do you even feel it to be necessary and/or significant?
3.
Does
the lack of a narrative irk you, or do you think it helps Blake to convey his
point?
Your assessment that the tiger stands in for some kind of evil, or fear, is the right place to start: the “fearful symmetry” of the tyger’s form and “deadly terrors” of its brain clear raise the spectre of a gothic terror. I would call this terror “gothic” because it seems to be directly provoked by what is *not* known: the problem in the poem, signaled by the rhetorical questions, is how we are to know what or who "made” the tyger (20). Unlike the child-like and naïve speakers in Blake’s Songs of Innocence, the speaker here is disturbed by the lack of knowledge. For this reason, the rhetorical questions are indeed crucial to the poem’s development: as you suggest, it is not narrative, but the questions introduce a number of specific mythological figures (including Icarus, Prometheus, and Hephaestus, and perhaps the Pleiades). The introduction of multiple religious traditions provokes us to consider Blake’s aim: the penultimate question, “Did he who make the Lamb make thee” (20), pushes us to consider the incapability of different theological traditions (here, it is important that the tiger does not figure in biblical accounts). When Blake asks, with his own fearful symmetry, the first stanza’s question as the poem’s final lines, he admits no answer to the question. Rather, the poem ends as it began by destabilizing what readers might believe they know. The poem’s opening and closing stanzas thus provide of “frame” by which we can comprehend the terror contained in the poem—the terror of not knowing, or more pointedly, confronting something which our structures of belief, our worldview, cannot explain. Do we “dare” to ask these questions, to think beyond conventions and doctrine to grasp truth? This is a question Blake would approach repeatedly in his later prophetic books. You might also look at other poems from Songs of Experience to delve further into his dislike of theological doctrine and Christian high church positions. "The Garden of Love" and "Holy Thursday" are especially pertinent here.
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