Themes
Religion
“The Tyger” was written to accompany Blake’s poem “The Lamb.” Both are creation poems, and together they explore the power and grandeur of God. This is especially clear in “The Lamb,” in which the speaker asks “Little Lamb, who made thee? / Dost thou know who made thee?” An answer is soon provided:
Little Lamb I’ ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek and he is mild,
He became a little child:
The lamb is symbolic of Christ, the Son of God. It is natural to assume, therefore, that Blake’s awesome and “fearful” tiger might also be God’s creation. In many ways the tiger resembles Christ’s opposite, Lucifer:
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
The angel Lucifer, like Prometheus who gave divine knowledge of fire to humanity, committed the ultimate insurrection against God, resulting in his fall from divine grace. Evidence of Lucifer also appears in the lines “When the stars threw down their spears, / And water’ d heaven with their tears.” One of the more difficult portions of the poem, it may be interpreted as referring to the battle between Lucifer and the angels, or “stars,” of heaven, who wept after losing their battle to him and all that that loss implied.
Many scholars of Blake have found a profound connection between “The Tyger” and another publication, his The Four Zoas, which was published in 1795. In this mythical work, the repressive god Urizen falls from divinity to create the material world, an unimaginative universe marked by proportion or “symmetry.” The tiger, then, is a product or natural extension of Urizen. Still other reviewers of “The Tyger” have suggested that mankind is responsible for the beast. The forests of the poem have often been compared to the dark, industrial cities of Paris and London; and the fact that the tiger was created through heat and force suggests that he was produced in a blacksmith’s shop rather than through divine imagination. Moreover, the line “On what wings dare he aspire?” — which is reminiscent of Icarus, who perished after flying too close to the sun with wings made of wax — suggests that an excessively proud, rebellious, and creative mortal produced the tiger through unnatural means.
While the lamb’s creator is revealed, the tiger’s engineer remains undefined at the poem’s conclusion. However, given the link to Blake’s “The Lamb,” especially in the cryptic verse “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” it is highly likely that Blake is in fact referring to God. At the very least, the fact that the question is asked at all confirms the existence of a single, powerful, and awe inspiring creator, one who dares to produce both the tiger and the lamb.
Good and Evil
Blake philosophically rejected socially accepted views of morality. His predilection toward exuberance and the imagination is intelligible in all of his works, especially in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell where he exposes the evils inherent in orthodox conceptions of virtue and the virtues inherent in orthodox conceptions of evil: “The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.” Blake’s distinctive moral position is likewise evident in “The Tyger,” which is perhaps best understood when compared to his “The Lamb”:
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o’ er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
The meekness of Blake’s lamb makes his “fearful” and “deadly” tiger appear all the more horrific, but to conclude that one is decidedly good and the other evil would be incorrect. The innocent portrayal of childhood in “The Lamb,” though attractive, lacks imagination. The tiger, conversely, is repeatedly associated with fire or brightness, providing a sharp contrast against the dark forests from which it emerges — “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night.” While such brightness might symbolize violence, it can also imply insight, energy, and vitality. The tiger’s domain is one of unrestrained self-assertion. Far from evil, Blake’s poem celebrates the tiger and the sublime excessiveness he represents. “Jesus was all virtue,” wrote Blake “and acted from impulse, not from rules.”
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