The Tyger

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake

Before watching the video:

Menagerie: a collection of live animals for study or display.

This video is presented by Blake enthusiast Professor John Stacy.
Unfortunately Professor Stacy is a little boring, but I added the video so that there is another interpretation of the "The Tyger" displayed, besides mine.

Tyger! Tyger! 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 sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & 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 watered heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 

      Blake was one of the first common people of his time to see a tiger in the London menagerie. I wonder what it would have been like not to know that something so majestic exists, and then seeing it in real life for the first time. Children in America grow up with toy tigers, books with pictures of tigers in them, and they are on TV, nothing is a surprise to anyone anymore.

      After Blake saw the magnificent beast, he drew a picture of the tiger (above). Blake wondered why, and how God (speaking of him as an artist, in order to compare nature to a work of art) could create something so ferocious, so lethal, and then also create something to innocent and harmless like the lamb. In the poem the speaker is talking directly to the Tyger, asking it repeated questions that are similar to the first, “What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” Throughout the next stanza’s Blake compares God to a sculptor and a blacksmith, and basically with a sting of questions, talking about how the Tyger was made. I think the Tyger in the poem is more then just a tiger itself, but it symbolizes the presence of evil in the world.

      Throughout the poem the speaker is asking, “What kind of a God, would design such a terrifying animal as the tiger?” And even under that it seems to be asking, “What does the undeniable existence of evil and violence in the world tell us about the nature of God?” I believe we live in a world in which He created both beauty and horror. How can you have one without the other? There are magnificent creatures like the tiger, and there are very meek and small creatures like the lamb. The speaker in the poem is not only asking about the tiger, but about evil and destruction itself. God created the tiger, just as he created us, are we not as destructive as a tiger? Do we not kill animals and eat them? A tiger is a ferocious beast, large in size and extremely strong, but if Blake is speaking about evil itself, I feel that people do more damage to not only other animals, but to other people. A tiger probably has a lower murder rate of the same species then human beings. I don’t feel that tigers are terrible, I would not want to be in close proximity to one, but are humans really any better?

      If then Blake is accusing God of creating something so evil as humans, I believe that God created man in his own image; and each man has the choice to do the right or wrong thing in their life. There is good, because there is evil; there is ferocious, because there is gentle; and there is innocence, because there is experience.