Preview

William Blake Discussion of the Lamb and the Tyger

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
948 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
William Blake Discussion of the Lamb and the Tyger
Blake's poem, "The Lamb", represents a spiritual exploration of innocence and purity. The description of the lamb indicates as much with imagery that reflects a sense of softness and child-like authenticity. The first word of "little" helps to create this mood throughout the poem with ideas such as "softest clothing woolly bright," "tender voice," "vales rejoicing" (symbolizing a universality regaling in the lamb's song of innocence and purity), and the description of the lamb being "meek and mild." With the shared rejoicing of the speaker in the closing lines, the poem illuminates the innocent and pure condition of the lamb, of goodness and unity in the world.

The countervailing force to this is the poem of "The Tyger." Blake continues the theme of perfect creation, although in this setting, it is a representation of the force of death, an "anti- lamb" expression of being in the world. Blake does not judge the tyger as a force that has to be obliterated, but rather is using the subject to explore the presence of evil in the world. Whereas the lamb is a song of innocence, the tyger is a song of experience, the opposing force to the lamb. Blake's description of the tyger is one fraught with the expression of this opposing force. The "fearful symmetry" reflects a much different impression than that of the lamb. The questioning of how one who created the lamb could "seize the fire" that gave birth to the tyger is brought out with the "twisting of the sinews of thy heart" as well as the "dread hand" and "dread feet." This force is not one to be derided or dismissed, for it is present in the world: "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" The question that Blake seems to be posing with both poems is how the presence of innocence and unity can be countered with the presence of destruction and fragmentation. Blake is exploring how the life force that is praised and exalted in the lamb can be challenged by the powers of the tyger. Blake poises the condition

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Before being good or bad, human beings are just humans who have to live with their own nature, which they sometimes cannot control. Man can do good or evil but he always makes it with a unique purpose, his personal satisfaction, because it is simply in his nature. Thus, human beings aware of good and evil are confronted with conflicting choices but they never act against their will. The poem, “The Human Abstract”, written by William Blake reflects on these characteristics of human beings and demonstrates how they are unconsciously corrupted by their own nature in a selfish way.…

    • 1123 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Lamb” perfectly portrays and symbolizes the innocence of childhood. Blake chose a lamb for the poem because they are associated with innocence and purity, just as a child who has not come into contact with the evil of the world is. Blake uses “The Tyger” to completely carry out the theme. A tiger is used to symbolize how people grow up, become aware of evil, and choose to let that evil overcome the innocence they once knew, the innocence of the lamb.The tiger is not loved by the speaker as the lamb is because the speaker is aware of the evil that the tiger is. Just as tigers dominate lambs in the animal kingdom, evil dominates innocence because innocence becomes lost after evil is…

    • 777 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Lamb

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages

    William Blake is inspired to write this poem in which the central purpose or theme is to identify who the Lamb is and its origins, by formulating a series of questions, and to describe its characteristics and personality by portraying its awesome attributes. The World English Dictionary defines Lamb as: “1. A young, immature sheep, especially under a year old and without permanent teeth; 2. Somebody who is meek, gentle, and mild, especially a baby or a small child; 3. Someone who is easily deceived or cheated; 4. Like a Lamb to the slaughter calmly and without resistance going to face something unpleasant or dangerous.” It is clearly noted by the author’s figurative language that the poem is symbolic and allegoric—having the Lamb’s description a second meaning beneath the surface one, conveying connotations beyond what is expressed, and an ulterior meaning as major interest. “Little Lamb who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?” The poem appears to be written in a form of Sonnet in a Petrarchan style with two stanzas. The first of eight lines…

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Lamb

    • 1096 Words
    • 5 Pages

    I. In Blake’s poem “The Lamb” it has two main themes childhood and spiritual development…

    • 1096 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Lamb

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A lamb is a gentle and meek creature that is both daring and submissive. A lamb is very much like a child. In “The Lamb,” William Blake creates a childlike tone through a very songlike form and structure. What this does is give the poem an innocent view, more in the first stanza than in the second. Through the use of apostrophe, the entire poem being an apostrophe, William Blake attributes human qualities to a lamb, the lamb being the listener, the child being the speaker. Throughout the entire poem the lamb and the child are interchangeable, the child is a lamb, the lamb is a child, it’s a metaphor that extends throughout the poem. William Blake uses symbolic language to create extended metaphors about the lamb. He talks about the creator of the lamb giving it “clothing of delight.”…

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Where the Sleeping Tyger Lies: An Analysis of the Sound Devices Used in The Tyger by William Blake…

    • 998 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poetry

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the poems “The Lamb” and “The Tyger,” the writer uses words that describe how the Lamb is one of innocence and purity. The Tyger is one that has the reader interpreting that he is one of evil and no remorse. It has the reader comparing the two different beings to what life is now as we know it.…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    <br>The structure of the first stanza helps us understand the relationships between the four aspects of human nature presented, cruelty, jealousy, terror and secrecy. The first and third lines start with the main word, while in the second and fourth ones the words come preceded by the word "And". This makes the reader connect cruelty with terror and jealousy with secrecy automatically. We can notice that the stress of the lines in this first stanza falls onto the main word, giving an emphasizing effect. Unlike many other Blake poems, such as "The Tyger" or "The Lamb" we cannot find rhyming couplets in this stanza, but the rhyming and stressing effect is enough for the reader to tie the ideas together. This effect is strengthened by the repetition of the word "human" in every line and the repetition of the "y" ending sounds in lines one, two and four.…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In The Lamb by William Blake the poem shows a strong metaphor of the 'little lamb' representing jesus and how he came to be. At first, however, it is not very obvious what the poem if refering to, until "For he calls himself a Lamb"(Line 14), this line clearly displays a referense to God starting with the fact that the lamb in the line is capatilized indicating a proper noun, not the common lamb as first perceived. Furthering this, seeing as the object is called the little lamb, along with the reference to the Lamb or God, you can assume that this little lamb would be the son of God, Jesus Christ.…

    • 255 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    What Does The Tyger Mean

    • 1423 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In this stanza, Blake is questioning whether or not god was proud or happy with what he created or if he is sad with it. In the last line he asks the question as though he already know the creator of the gentle lamb but can't fathom that such a creator could create the tyger as well two having the same creator. The Tiger Itself is used as imagery in the poem; it represents something that is powerful, evil, unpredictable, and unpredictable. In contrast, in "The Lamb", the image of the lamb itself represent godly, innocent, pure, and childlike.…

    • 1423 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Lamb Annotation

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages

    First, we will learn about The Lamb. Everyone in the class will read the poem to themselves and then with a partner. They will discuss what they think the meanings to the poem is to them and we will discuss them as a whole class. Line one “Little Lamb, who made thee?” it is asking the lamb who created the lamb, where did it come from?…

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In “The Tyger,” William Blake explains that there is more that meets the eye when one examines the Creator and his creation, the tiger. The character is never defined. All throughout the poem the character questions the Creator of the tiger to determine if the Creator is demonic or godlike. The poem reflects mainly the character’s reaction to the tiger, rather than the tiger ‘s reaction to the world. The character is inquiring about the location of the Creator of the tiger when he says, “ In what distant deeps or skies” (5). In this quote the character is trying to figure out where exactly the Creator is located. He wants to know if he’s in Heaven or Hell. The words “deeps” and “skies” could have many meanings. The description of “deeps” and “skies” indicates common theoretical language for Heaven and Hell. This leads to the uncertainty of ‘the doublings of the tiger’, and it suggests that either God or the Devil, or both, could have been responsible for Creation. These lines speak of the power and strength of the tiger, and of its maker. If God is the Creator, he is a strong and powerful force. The Creator is shown to be the strongest of creatures and the greatest of artists. It is only He who can ‘twist the muscle’ of the heart of His Creation. He’s simply referring to God as the Creator.…

    • 1281 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Tyger Response

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages

    It seems as though everything in nature exists in a balanced state of equilibrium. It is evident that there is an opposing positive and negative relationship to everything in the world; day and night, good and evil, black and white; which leads some to enquire if one portion could exist without the other. This very notion is explored in William Blake’s “The Tyger”, where he develops this idea through language, imagery and poetic devices and through the poem’s exploration of the inseparable forces of good and evil. This poem breathes true of human nature through its use of contrasting agents where the author uses bright imagery and conflicting constants to compare the likes and differences that define our world.…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    What Does The Tyger Mean

    • 535 Words
    • 3 Pages

    To contrast the poems “The Lamb” and “THE TYGER”, William Blake has many examples of symbolism. In “The Lamb”, Blake uses the lamb to symbolize God's children and his son, Jesus. The lamb is being symbolized that God created mankind and that humans are his children. People are the lamb for him to watch over, “He is meek & he is mild, he became a little child: I a child & thou a lamb…” (The Lamb, 15-17). This quote also symbolizes Jesus as the lamb being referred to as a child, when Jesus was just a baby he was known as the Lamb of God. In “THE TYGER” Blake…

    • 535 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The lamb is one of the simplest poems of Blake. The symbolic meaning of it is almost clearly stated in the poem 'The Lamb' which is probably the most important in the poem of innocence. Here the symbols of child, The poem begins with a child like directness and natural world that show no one of the signs of grownups. The poet addresses lamb itself. Lamb is pure, innocent and it is associated with Christ. Being a visionary Blake invites the reader to world free form reasoning. He describes the lamb as he sees it. The lamb has been blessed with life and with capacity to drink from the stream and feed from the meadow. It has been allotted with bright, soft and warm wool which serves as its clothing.…

    • 1115 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics