Name: Manvi

Course & year: BA Honours English; 2nd year

Section: B
Roll number: 510

Q. Write a critical appraisal of “The Tyger”.

A. The poem “The Tyger” is that the masterpiece of William Blake’s poetry. It is a poem of
six four-line stanzas. It is one of the most well-known poems by Blake from his Songs of
Experience. It forms an equivalent to “The Lamb” from Songs of Innocence. Copious
interpretations of “The Tyger” reflect a complexity of its central image. The poem
demonstrates Blake’s excellence in craftsmanship and vivid skill.
This poem may be a fine specimen of Blake’s command over the assembly of musical notes.
Each poem of Blake is described to be ‘a casket beautiful in itself’. The poem “The Tyger” is
a brilliant example of his lyricism. In each line’ there's rhythm creating enchanting music.
During the Romantic Era, William Blake demonstrated a unique way of *viewing the world,
that was easily separated from the normal way of thinking. His poetry alongside the ideas he
expressed have influenced a countless number of people to ascertain the planet because it
truly is: beautiful yet corrupted by oppression. William Blake lived his life in poverty, finding
his only comfort within the confines of his work; therefore, there's little question that his
poetry reflected his life and ideals. Through his childhood, obsession with art, and the
various writers he came in contact with influencing him, William Blake conveyed his
questioning attitude within the many stanzas he wrote. Within line 7, Blake mentions
“wings” which symbolize the greatness and powerfulness behind the act of making. In
stanza four, Blake utilizes the metaphor of a smithy by mentioning a hammer, chain, furnace
and an anvil which represents creation in itself, because the tools mentioned are usually
employed by a smithy, who creates instruments out of hot metal. This comparison to a
smithy indicates that the act of making the tiger was intentional. A smithy makes tools, with
the intention to use them or sell them later. By developing this metaphor throughout “The
Tyger,” Blake indicates that the creation of the tiger accomplished the aim of the Creator,
but lead Blake to question why? Within “The Tyger,” Blake conveys an attitude that's mixed
with wonder and inquisition. From the beginning to the end, Blake asks a substantial
number of questions directed towards the tiger. Blake appears to be amazed at the very
concept of creation; therefore, he asks an animal if it knows anything. For this reason, the
reader is sucked in, adopts an equivalent feeling of wonder and inquisition, and stresses so
as to get an equivalent secret Blake is striving to get.
Each subsequent stanza elaborates on the conception of this first question. Blake builds on
the idea that nature, like a work of art, must in some way contain a reflection of its Creator.
The tiger is strikingly beautiful, and yet horrific in its capacity for violence. What kind of a
God, then, could design such a ‘fearful symmetry’? The tiger initially appears as a strikingly
sensuous image. However, because the poem progresses, it takes on a symbolic character. It
involves embody the spiritual and moral problem that the poem explores: perfectly
beautiful and yet potentially destructive. Since the tiger’s astonishing nature exists both in
physical and moral terms, the speaker feels that its origin must also encompass both
physical and moral dimensions. The speaker stands in awe of the tiger as a sheer physical
and aesthetic achievement. But, at the same time, he recoils in horror from the moral
implications of such a creation. Thus, the poem addresses not only the question of who
could make such a creature because the tiger, but who would perform this act. This is a
question of both creative capacity and will. The reference to the lamb in the last but one
stanza reminds the reader that both the tiger and the lamb are created by the same God,
and raises questions about the implications of this. It also invites a contrast between the
perspectives of ‘experience’ and ‘innocence’ represented during this poem and within the
poem ‘The Lamb’.
“The Tyger” contrasts the lamb of “Songs of Innocence.” The forceful eloquence of “The
Tyger” is an antitype to the sweet hymn of the tender infantile sentiment of the lyric “The
Lamb.” it's an ‘enraptured song’ conveying an important vision of some themes, which Blake
presents elsewhere in additional detail. The short and successive questions convey the
wonder of the poet. Some of the questions require answers. They are left incomplete as if
the poet’s awe and admiration were too great to permit him to finish them. ‘The Tyger’ is
that the symbol of the fierce forces of the soul. As the poet thinks, these forces are needed
to interrupt experience bonds. He says that the breath of the lion is that the wisdom of God.
In the poem, we will see the regard to the Tiger and therefore the Lamb. Both of those
creatures are the 2 aspects of an equivalent soul. The soul is none but God. The lamb
represents the meekness, simplicity, and innocence of the soul, while the Tiger stands for
the wrath and harsher side. In the person of Christ, these two aspects of the soul are found.
The poem’s speaker believes that Christ doesn't have one face but several faces. The tiger
seemingly symbolizes the ‘abundant life’ which Jesus delivered to life. So, it stands for
regeneration and energy.
The poet wonders how God can create such a terrible creature. He asks if the tiger has been
created by an equivalent hand that has created the lamb. So, he thinks that the tiger isn't
created during this world but somewhere within the skies or the ‘distant deeps. ‘The poet
wonders how the creator dared to fetch the fire for the tiger’s eyes. He fails to understand
why God has created such a fearful creation. The creation of such an animal must have
required a prodigious apparatus. Otherwise, the tiger’s heart muscles or the deadly terror of
the tiger’s brain would not have been created. The anvil, the furnace, the chains, and the
hammers must have all been wonderful. Even the stars, the first creations of God, were
overtaken by grief and horror when they beheld the new creation.
In the poem, there is confusion as to the question of who has created the tiger. The creation
process has been conveyed in the words and phrases that, although meaningful in their
totality, do not yield any clear elucidation of the creator. As in other poems, Jesus Christ has
been conceived of being God and, at the same time, a prophet. Blake has not made it clear
here. It may not be God but an unknown, supernatural spirit like Blake’s mythical heroes,
who have fashioned the tiger.
This poem becomes an illustration of the theological theme which later becomes known as
theodicy, a vindication of God’s goodness in view of the presence of evil in the universe.
‘The Tyger’ leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the sheer magnitude of God’s
power, and the inscrutability of divine will. The perspective of experience in this poem
involves a subtle acknowledgment of what is unexplainable in the universe. It presents evil
as the prime example of something that may not just be denied, but may also not be
explained easily. The open awe of ‘The Tyger’ contrasts with the easy confidence, in ‘The
Lamb’, of a child’s innocent faith in a benevolent universe.