Saturday, August 3, 2013

Discuss the symbolism William Blake used in his poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger."

Both "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" are poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, with the speaker of the poems standing somewhere outside these two qualities. "The Lamb" is written almost as a psalm of worship as the child, who is innocent but unquestioning of his faith, asks the Lamb who has made him.  Yet, the child's question becomes rhetorical as he answers it, as well:



Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:



Clearly, the Lamb is Jesus Christ, and those who take His name are Christians, and the knowledge of which the child innocently assumes.


On the other hand, Blake's "The Tyger" juxtaposes the existence of "fearful symmetry" against the innocence of the lamb.  The paradox is that "some immortal hand" has forged this symbol of evil as well as the one of innocence and good.  Thus, the speaker marvels that the "immortal hand" that has "dared its deadly terror grasp" in the act of creating the tiger could also create the lamb.  And, unlike the poem on the Lamb in which the innocent believer announces that the Lamb is Jesus, the speaker of "The Tyger" continues to wonder how good and evil can be created by the same immortal hand:



Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,


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