The Tiger
By William Blake
1757-1827TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
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?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
I think that this poem is questioning why is there evil in the world. The entire poem is constructed out of questions, William Blake has to be wondering about something. After looking further into Blake, he is a religious man so I would argue that the "He" and "His' in the fifth stanza is referring to God, seeing as the bible had an influence on his work and that in the bible a capitalized He or Him or His refers to God. What Blake is wondering is why did God make such terrible and fearsome creatures? An interesting question because why would an all-powerful entity, who loves the earth and everything in it, put evil and fear into the world? It makes sense to question this but to take this poem a step further I believe what "Tiger" is getting at is that everything has beauty even that which we fear or reject, he ends the first and last stanza with "fearful symmetry" which suggest beauty in a scary way. The symmetry of a butterfly is considered beautiful so why shouldn't the symmetry of a tiger be viewed in the same light? I guess butterflies don't try to eat you but there's still beauty to be found.
ReplyDeleteI like where you’re going with that, Mike. I definitely agree with you in that this poem is speaking of a creator (God) and His creation. I like how you interpreted Blake's questions to be him pondering God's intentions of creating predatory life and their evil. I would just like to further support your point with another piece of evidence from the fifth stanza. It starts out with even the stars marveling in tears at creation's beauty and then goes on to ask, "Did He who made the lamb make thee?" In the Bible, the Lamb of God refers to Jesus because he gives himself as the ultimate sacrificial offering for humanity, a role which lambs tend to fill. Given those things, I absolutely agree that Blake is questioning why God, who made such beauty as his son, would make a destructive beast such as a tiger - an animal that would most likely kill and eat a lamb given the chance.
ReplyDeleteJust combining these two ideas a bit, what if the tiger is meant to deviate from the normal perception of beauty? If you really think about it, a tiger has no real symmetry like a butterfly, which has a definite mirror image. I wonder if Blake was trying to say something about not only animals that stray from the intentions of God, but rather uses the tiger as a symbol for sin/sinners? I completely agree with Mike that the word "He" is intentionally capitalized to signify a higher being, but what if the "symmetry" of the tiger (or lack thereof) is representative of things that are not as God intended, being ordered like the perfect symmetry of a butterfly. The thing that got me thinking about this in terms of sin was the use of the image of fire in the second stanza, fire being associated with hell, which is obviously where sinners end up.
ReplyDeleteI understand what you are saying but I am confused on why the first line of that stanza "In what distant deeps or skies" I can see how the distant deeps could represent hell but why would he juxtapose skies which would naturally represent heaven. Although fire is repeated later in the poem in the form of the word "furnace." He does seem to imply some sort of doom throughout the poem but I would argue that the purpose is more to question why there is bad things in the world rather than a warning against sin.
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