Analysis Of “The Tyger” And “The Lamb”

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 вЂ?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 вЂ?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 вЂ?twist the muscle’ of the heart of His Creation. He’s simply referring to God as the Creator.

Because of the glory of God’s creation, the reader learns that the creator is invincible. Blake may have done this to get the reader to think who really made did the tiger. As like so many of his lyrics, part of the poem’s approach is to resist attempts to impress meaning upon it. “The Tiger” tempts us to a coherent uneasiness, but in the end weaken our efforts. There’s more than one answer to this question. If the reader were a religious person they would know that God created every living creature in this world including the tiger. So the answer to them would be that God created the tiger, therefore the reader will come to the conclusion from this quote, “ Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” (20). As the reader read this paper one will learn that the Creator in the poem “The Lamb” is God, so the reader will know that the Creator of the tiger could be the same Creator as that of the lamb. On one hand this is a reference to the God of the Bible; but on the other, it could be a reference to Blake himself. Surely, the poem is as inspiring as it is ambiguous.” Someone that is of no religion would think other wise or maybe someone wouldn’t care who made the tiger.

Blake uses symbols to express the strength of the tiger and its Creator. The main symbol in “The Tyger” is the tiger itself. The tiger is formed on a number of ideas, which is the eye of man and God, but it is also a sign of the very same eye, which created it. The word “fire” is used to exemplify the aggressive character of the tiger, “Burnt the fire of thine eyes?”(6). The fire can be used to describe the way the tiger sees and is seen by other people. When a person sees or comes into contact with a tiger, the person gets tense right away because we know that one false move and the tiger may attack. This example shows how vicious and hostile the tiger can be just as a hurricane. The Creator could also be described as a hostile person also. This might be a depiction of himself. The sign of fire is leading in the structure of the poem. To know the foundation of the вЂ?fire’ is to know the source of the Creator. He relates the tiger’s environment to one during the Industrial Revolution when he says, “What the hammer? What the chain? / In what furnace was thy brain?” (13-14). This tells what Blake’s childhood was like for him. It was like an industrial factory and that the tiger’s thinking and his creation began in a furnace. This is so because when he wrote this poem it was during the French Revolution, which was a time of suffering for so many people. He is interpreting his environment through the tiger’s environment.

In “ The Lamb,” William Blake explains that God can be like a child, meek and innocent. The young boy in this poem questions who made the lamb

...