Examples Figures of Speech and Allusions: THE TIGER by William Blake

THE TIGER By William Blake
Examples Figures of Speech and Allusions
Alliteration: Tiger, tiger, burning bright (line 1); frame thy fearful symmetry? (line 4)
Metaphor: Comparison of the tiger and his eyes to fire.
Anaphora: Repetition of what at the beginning of sentences or clauses. Example: What dread hand
and what dread feet? / What the hammer? what the chain?
Allusion: Immortal hand or eye: God or Satan
Allusion: Distant deeps or skies: hell or heaven
Symbols
The Tiger: Evil (or Satan)

The Lamb: Goodness (or God)
Distant Deeps: Hell
Skies: Heaven
Themes
The Existence of Evil
“The Tiger” presents a question that embodies the central theme: Who created the tiger? Was it the
kind and loving God who made the lamb? Or was it Satan? Blake presents his question in lines 3
and 4: What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Blake realizes, of course, that God made all the creatures on earth. However, to express his
bewilderment that the God who created the gentle lamb also created the terrifying tiger, he includes
Satan as a possible creator while raising his rhetorical questions, notably the one he asks in lines 5
and 6:
In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thy eyes?
Deeps appears to refer to hell and skies to heaven. In either case, there would be fire--the fire of
hell or the fire of the stars.
Of course, there can be no gainsaying that the tiger symbolizes evil, or the incarnation of evil, and
that the lamb (Line 20) represents goodness, or Christ. Blake's inquiry is a variation on an old
philosophical and theological question: Why does evil exist in a universe created and ruled by a
benevolent God? Blake provides no answer. His mission is to reflect reality in arresting images. A
poet’s first purpose, after all, is to present the world and its denizens in language that stimulates the
aesthetic sense; he is not to exhort or moralize. Nevertheless, the poem does stir the reader to
deep thought. Here is the tiger, fierce and brutal in its quest for sustenance; there is the lamb, meek
and gentle in its quest for survival. Is it possible that the same God who made the lamb also made
the tiger? Or was the tiger the devil's work?
The Awe and Mystery of Creation and the Creator
The poem is more about the creator of the tiger than it is about the tiger itself. In contemplating the
terrible ferocity and awesome symmetry of the tiger, the speaker is at a loss to explain how the
same God who made the lamb could make the tiger. Hence, this theme: humans are incapable of
fully understanding the mind of God and the mystery of his handiwork.
The Tiger
By William Blake
1 Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Stanza 1 Summary
What immortal being created this terrifying creature which, with its perfect proportions (symmetry), is an awesome killing
machine?
2 In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sei ze the fire?
Stanza 2 Summary
Was it created in hell (distant deeps) or in heaven (skies)? If the creator had wings, how could he get so close to the fire in
which the tiger was created? How could he work with so blazing a fire?
3 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?
Stanza 3 Summary
What strength (shoulder) and craftsmanship (art) could make the tiger's heart? What being could then stand before it (feet)
and shape it further (hand)?
4 What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
Stanza 4 Summary
What kind of tool (hammer) did he use to fashion the tiger in the forge fire? What about the chain connected to the pedal
which the maker used to pump the bellows? What of the heat in the furnace and the anvil on which the maker hammered
out his creation? How did the maker muster the courage to grasp the tiger?
5 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?
Stanza 5 Summary
When the stars cast their light on the new being and the clouds cried, was the maker pleased with his creation?
6 Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Stanza 6 Summary
The poet repeats the central question of the poem, stated in Stanza 1. However, he changes could (line 4) to dare (line 24).
This is a significant change, for the poet is no longer asking who had the capability of creating the tiger but who dared to
create so frightful a creature.
The Lamb by William Blake
William Blake’s poem The Lamb has been regarded “as one of the great lyrics of English
Literature.” It has the form of a dialogue between the child and the lamb. The lamb is a
universal symbol of selfless innocence, Jesus the Lamb. The Lamb identifies with Christ to
form a Trinity of child, Lamb and Redeemer. Christ is the Lamb of God. The Christian
connotations also contain the implications of sacrifice, death and tragedy; Christ the
human sacrifice who look upon himself the sins of the world.”
Form
It consists of two stanzas, each with five rhymed couplets. Repetition in the first and last
couplet of each stanza turns these lines into a refrain, and helps in providing the poem its
song-like quality. It’s written in trochaic tetrameter:
The poem has two stanzas with ten lines each. The first two and last two lines of each
stanza are repeated like the chorus or refrain of the song. These lines have six beats, and
they serve as bookends to the middle six lines, most of which have seven beats.
In this poem the poet pays a tribute to Lord Christ who was innocent and pure like a child
and meek and mild like a lamb. The little child asks the lamb if he knows who has created it,
who has blessed it with life and with the capacity to feed by the stream and over the meadow.
The child asks him if the lamb knows who has given it bright and soft wool, which serves as
its clothing, who has given it a tender voice which fills the valley with joy. In the first stanza
of ten lines of William Blake’s poem The Lamb, the child who is supposed to be speaking to
the lamb, gives a brief description of the little animal as he sees it. The lamb has been
blessed with life and with the capacity to feed by the stream and over the meadow; it has
been endowed with bright and soft wool which serves as its clothing; it has a tender voice
which fills the valley with joy.
The readers here are provided with a true portrait of a lamb. In the poem the child of
innocence repeatedly asks the lamb as to who made him. Does he know who created him
(the lamb)? The same question has been put repeatedly all through the first lines of the
poem. The child addresses Little Lamb to ask him who made him and wants to ascertain
whether he knows who made him. The child wants to know who gave the Lamb his life, who
fed him while living along the river on the other said of the meadow. He also wants to know
from the Lamb who supplied him with pleasant body-cover (clothing) which is softest, full of
wool and shining. The Lamb is also asked by the child who gave him such delicate bleating
voice, which resounds a happy note in the surrounding valleys. The stanza is marked by the
child’s innocence which is the first stage in Blake’s journey to truth.
In the second stanza of the poem, there is an identification of the lamb, Christ, and the child.
Christ has another name, that is, Lamb, because Christ is meek and mild like lamb. Christ
was also a child when he first appeared on this earth as the Son of God. Hence the
appropriateness of the following lines: “He became a little child:/I a child & thou a lamb, /We
are called by his name.” The child in this poem speaks to the lamb, as if the lamb were
another child and could respond to what is being said. The child shows his deep joy in the
company of the lamb who is just like him, meek and mild. The poem conveys the spirit of
childhood – the purity, the innocence, the tenderness of childhood and the affection that a
child feels for little creatures.

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THE TIGER By William Blake

Examples Figures of Speech and Allusions

The Tiger: Evil (or Satan)

The Awe and Mystery of Creation and the Creator

1 Tiger, tiger, burning bright

2 In what distant deeps or skies

3 And what shoulder and what art

4 What the hammer? what the chain?

6 Tiger, tiger, burning bright

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