Creation is the beginning of everything. The people we love, the animals we see, and the world we live in were all created by something or someone who has a greater power. Throughout history, many have questioned who created everything we know and how this person has such power. Along with this, many have questioned why someone with such power would create dark and evil beings that cause harm. William Blake is one of the many poets who questions this exact scenario of creation in our world. Throughout his array of works, Blake always seems to be searching for answers. In 1789, Blake printed a collection of nineteen poems called “Songs of Innocence” followed by another collection of twenty-six poems titled “Songs of Experience” five short years later in which he questions power, God, and creation. (A&E) The two volumes were later published together as a collection called “Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul”. Blake’s title directs the reader to analyze the ‘contrary states’ of innocence and experience while also discovering connections between the two when reading the poems. Two of the most comparable poems in the collection are “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”. These poems are prime examples of Blake’s search for answers and his questioning of the life around him. “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” share many similarities and differences when considering the contexts behind the poems, the situation presented, and the literary devices and style Blake implemented while both try to discuss the question of creation.
William Blake’s life and world views had a great influence on all of his works. Blake was alive during a time that had much social, political, and philosophical turmoil. Blake was greatly influenced by the Enlightenment period, the start of the Industrial Revolution, and his religious belief of being a “Dissenter”. (Bentley) All of these aspects are evident in the contexts of the poems in “Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul”. (A&E) “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” both have religious underpinnings that advocate Blake’s own beliefs. Blake believed that God was within a person and didn’t believe in the external God and formalized religion that many believe in today. (A&E) Unlike other poets and writers of his time, Blake was against Deism and rationality that was the basis of many thinkers. Blake overall believed in the Holy Spirit and in Christ, as seen in “The Lamb”, however he held the belief that organized religion suffocated the freedom that faith in God was supposed to bring. (Bentley) Because of this, he questioned the main ideologies of the church as seen in “The Tyger” when the speaker is questioning the tyger about its creator and why its creator would have created something so terrible. Along with Blake’s religious beliefs, his personal view of the world around him was also apparent in his works. The industrialization brought on oppression, poverty, and injustice which left Blake disgusted with humanity. (Bentley) “The Tyger” possesses this level of disgust and some critics analyze that the tyger is a symbol of the dark and deadly Industrial revolution by Blake’s use of the word “symmetry”. (Bentley) “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” can be read in many different contexts to understand many different meanings.
“The Lamb” is a part of the collection “The Songs of Innocence” in which Blake writes in a more simplistic narrative that seems to be almost childlike while being set in a picturesque countryside filled with shepherds and lambs. The speaker of the poem is told in the line “I a child & thou a lamb” towards the end of the poem and even after it is stated, it is not clear whether the narrator means an actual child or just a child of God. The ‘child’ who is speaking to the lamb is representing the innocence of human life. At the beginning of the poem, the ‘child’ questions the lamb about its creator but it becomes evident to the reader that the ‘child’ is actually testing the lamb. The ‘child’ seems to be a child because of the apparent naivetés and inexperience. Contrary to “The Lamb”, the speaker in “The Tyger” is very hard to pin down as well as the setting of the poem. Blake doesn’t state in the poem, which is a part of the collection “The Songs of Experience”, who is speaking as he does in “The Lamb” and the reader can only see the actions of the speaker while being given little detail about the location other than “Forests of the night” and “distant deeps or skies”. The speaker is a very cold, experienced visionary who can easily criticize the world around them. The speaker is looking for answers by questioning the creator of a creature who is the complete opposite of the sweet lamb. Counterintuitively, comparing the two speakers of the poems, the childlike, inexperienced speaker knows the answers while the more mature, experienced speaker is searching for an answer he or she may never receive. Both poems share the overarching theme of religion but in very different ways. In “The Tyger”, Blake questions who could create the Tyger but doesn’t directly state that he is questioning God himself and only alludes to a higher power such as in the lines “What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”. On the other hand, “The Lamb” is full of religious symbols that represent Christianity such as the lamb, the child, and a description of Jesus in the line “He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb”. While both are based on religious ideologies, the poems are opposites. Blake presents the idea that religion and creation can be easily understood and accepted by those who are innocent while it is questioned and criticized by those who have experience in the world.
William Blake implemented many of the same literary devices in both “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”. Both poems use apostrophe while “speaking” to the creatures in question and both implement alliteration, assonance, and repetition such as the lines “Little Lamb”, “Dost thou know who” and “Tyger, Tyger..”. “The Lamb” follows a very simplistic rhyme scheme of AABB and trochaic meter while being structured into two stanzas both containing ten lines each. Each stanza’s first and last two lines are repeated in order to mimic a refrain. This poem has a very warm, song-like nature making it seem even more childlike. Like “The Lamb”, “The Tyger” also has rhyming couplets with a (mostly) trochaic rhythm throughout although the structure of the poem contains six quatrains rather than two ten-line stanzas. The harshness of the vocabulary makes it less likely to be put into song and it seems to be more of an eerie chant, but a refrain is evident between the first and last stanza making it have some sort of rhythm and sound. While questioning the lamb, the child uses imagery and personification that makes the poem seem even more innocent such as the lines “Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing wooly bright”. The imagery used throughout “The Lamb”, represents how God is viewed by many. The opposite is true in “The Tyger”, which uses imagery that paints a picture of a creature and creator who are evil such as the line “The thin eyes burn with fire?” Although the poems share many of the same literary devices, the attitude and tone of the poems couldn’t be more contradictory. The tone of “The Tyger” is very deep and dark with the questioning that takes place of the creator of the world. On the other hand, “The Lamb” possess a tone that is light and airy when describing the creator and what all the creator has accomplished.
The similarities and differences between “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” present the readers of the poems an intense discussion of the question of who the creator of our world could be. William Blake wrote the poems in contrast to one another in order to illustrate the many sides of the world in which he lived and the way he believed the people of the world should question it. Blake used many of the same literary devices in both of his poems in order to display how alike innocence and experience can be. The different situations of the poems display the contrast between the interpretation of the creator. On one hand, there is a creator that is accepted and is seen as the highest power while on the other hand, the creator is seen as an evil doer who creates beasts rather than pleasant beings. Considering the many social, political, and philosophical contexts that are evident while reading the poem are important in understanding the true meaning behind Blake’s work. Without considering the contexts that influence the works, the contrasting situations presented, and the literary devices that Blake specifically implemented, one would miss out on the powerful discussion of creation that Blake bestows.
Originally published 15.10.2019