The Tyger

William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” is a compilation of questions about a tiger from a child’s perspective that one may find frustrating due to there being no answers coming from the text. There are also many paradoxes and contradictions presented from the questions pointed towards this amazing creature. The main contradiction I saw in this poem is how the tiger was made, and looking at the spelling of “tyger” and our prompt, I believe the “tyger” is a symbol for the industrial revolution or the advancing of technology in today’s society.

In the beginning of the poem, the speaker lays down imagery of the tyger, describing it as a ferocious beast, and something to gaze in awe upon. In the fourth stanza, the reader is presented with many questions about the creation of this unique creature: “What the hammer? What the chain?/ In what furnace was thy brain?/ What the anvil? What dread grasp/ Dare its deadly terrors clasp?” These questions reference many tools that a blacksmith would use, and going along with the paradoxes, I interpreted this as the “tyger” being the symbol for industrialization. In stanza three, the speaker asks, “And what shoulder, & what art,/ Could twist the sinews of thy heart?” I believe the speaker, or possibly Blake is referencing industrialization and putting a negative connotation on it. In addition, in line twenty the speaker asks, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” Looking at this line, I noticed “Lamb” is capitalized, and I believe there is another symbol here, possibly being that the lamb is the innocence and beauty of nature and it’s creations. The comparison of the tyger and the lamb furthers the harmful outlook of the tyger, or the advancing technology of the modern world. The speaker is making a case that modern technology is becoming a very hazardous and detrimental cause in today’s society. Finally, looking at the nursery rhyme characteristics of the poem and the repetition of the first and last stanzas, I believe the speaker wants to make his message easier to understand for the youth so that our coming generations do not continue on this terrible course. The speaker wants everyone to be able to look at this robotic tiger and see that nature did not create it, but rather man did, and nothing good will come out if it.

Blake, William. “The Tyger”. The Norton Introduction To Literature. Allison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, Kelly J. Mays.-9th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.