Amanda Garrison
Blake’s “The Tyger” and the Creation of Evil William Blake’s “The Tyger,” in response to “The Lamb,” addresses the universal question of why the creator of beauty and gentility would create a world with danger and destruction. Although in the poem the speaker is questioning who the creator is of such a destructive creature, he is ultimately asking what kind of creator would create a being as gentle as a lamb, but yet a creature as horrific as a tiger and why. Blake uses both the lamb and the tiger to represent the good and evil displayed throughout mankind. A common topos throughout literature is Christ as a lamb, and Blake’s “The Lamb” is a good representation of this topos. Although “The Tyger” references to this topos in “The Lamb,” it is also a contrast of the poem, in that “The Lamb” speaks of the creation of good, and “The Tyger” refers to the creation of evil in the world. The diction and rhyme scheme Blake uses throughout the poem helps lead the readers to understand this contrast as well as his reference to the topos of Christ as the lamb. Aside from the speaker’s initial and most important question, he lingers over many other questions throughout the poem, all of which seem to lead back to his main idea of who would create the Tyger. The difference between “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” is that in “The Lamb,” the speaker only addresses one simple question: “Little Lamb, who made thee?”(Line 1). While the first stanza is the one inquiring, the second stanza actually answers this question. The reader is not left with any unanswered questions by the time they are finished with the poem. The speaker of “The Lamb” focuses on answering a single question, while the speaker of “The Tyger” leaves all of his multiple questions unanswered. Even the most important question of the poem, “What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” never seems to be completely answered (lines 3 and 4). Instead of allowing the reader to gain a sense of closure by the end of the poem, the speaker chooses to close it with almost the same question asked in the beginning. He opens the poem with the question “What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (lines 3-4) and closes the poem with the question “What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” (lines 23-24). In the first stanza the speaker asks what being could make a creature like this and has the capacity to. The last stanza changes the diction a bit from the first and instead the word “could” is replaced with “dare,” asking now what being would dare to create a creature such as the Tyger. The speaker uses repetition of the lines in the first and last stanza to emphasize what he believes to be the most important point of the poem and forces the reader to reevaluate the words from the opening. Although they are technically two different questions, they still form a main focus throughout the poem. This focus is on questioning why such a powerful being could and would create the horrific Tyger after he made such a gentle little Lamb. Blake’s poem questions more than just who the creator of the Tyger is. This thought of whether the creator of the Lamb is also the creator of the Tyger goes into a deeper question. From interpretation, the Lamb represents the innocence of mankind, while the Tyger represents the evil in the world. The speaker questions who the creator of this evil is, because it simply doesn’t make sense that it would be the same being that made the innocent little lamb. Blake causes the reader to question why this being would give the Tyger such dangerous qualities when he could have made it good-willed like the Lamb. The second stanza plays around with the idea of the Devil being the creator of the Tyger. Line 5 uses the allusions “distant deeps or skies,” with the “distant deeps” representing Hell and the “skies” representing the skies of Heaven. He also uses dark words such as “dread,” “dare,” and “deadly terrors,”