William Blake Research Paper

Adult Living in Despair
William Blake was a first generation Romantic poet, along with Samuel Coleridge and Charles Woodsworth. Each poet had an archetype which meant they had some form of Byronic hero within them and wanted to find a way to escape their bodies. Blake focused on the social rebel. He believed governments and institutions were corrupt and all the people had a right to fight against them. He was more than just a poet, he was also an illustrator. He wanted to combine pictures and words together. Through some of Blake’s work he wanted to show what despair was really about. Even though several of his poems were focused around children and how they should think, some could be interpreted through an adult point of view.
In his poem The Tyger he portrays a tiger in place of what he really wants readers to see; a jaded, hopeless adult. Why was this person created in such an evil way? The poem starts with the repetition of the name “Tyger Tyger”, (1) which creates a chant-like beginning making it sound mysterious from the start. “Burning bright” (1) could be described for the appearance of the tiger because of their orange fur but holds a deeper meaning describing what the person is feeling inside mentally. He is burning with hopelessness and anger. The Tyger being “in the forests of the night” (2) shows the mysteriousness and power of him even more. Forests are always connected with fear, danger, and the unknown.
The poem asks how such a creature was created.
What “immortal hand or eye” (3) could have created someone to be like this? It is believed God is part light and darkness due to the fact for creating such good people in the world but also putting others into it that give no help to society. Not only are we concerned with what made him but where was he made. What “distant deeps or skies”, (5) pertaining to Hell as the deeps and Heaven as the skies, was he made? He puts “distant” in there showing the reader that he was created somewhere far away that does not belong here. It continues into the next stanza questioning who made this Tyger. “What shoulder, & what art” (9) could have the strength to create something like this. The “art” is spoken about a type of work that was done to create this Tyger. It is considered art because of the complexity and how much meaning was put into creating it. The metaphors he uses in the poem, “hammer”, (13) “chain”, (13) “furnace”, (14) and “anvil” (15) are all devices that a blacksmith uses in order to form metal. Metal is hard and cold which can be interpreted about the personality of this Tyger. At this point in the poem we can tell Blake is becoming angry and wanting to know more about this person. The questions are being asked more and more, “What the hammer? What the chain? / (13) In what furnace was thy brain? / (14) What the anvil? What dread grasp /” (15) and the pace of the poem is picking up. He also uses his first exclamation point,
“Dare its deadly terrors clasp!” (16) stating that this is the climax of the poem and they need to know who created this creature.
This hopeless person that is stuck being this Tyger that no one likes is still created by a God.
It is a God that holds darkness in him rather than light. Angels from above “threw down their spears” (17) because they are so upset with this person walking around. They are disappointed that this creature is making a bad name for all the other ones. They “watered heaven with their tears” (18) because the fallen angels have been casted out and are no longer looked upon. These lines are the most religious lines of the poem. “Did he smile his work to see” (19) is going back to referencing God even though it is a God that wants to put sin and corruption into the world. Is he smiling at his work and this creature he created? Is this what he wanted the final result to be? Someone who is filled with anger, despair, and hate? The Angels are confused on how the Tyger turned out like this and question if the same person who made the Tyger is “he who made the Lamb?” (20) The Lamb is a symbol of Jesus Christ who we can say was made by God but also a reference back to Blake’s poem The Lamb. The Lamb is a soft, senseless creature and how could the same creator make both of these two with such extreme
differences.
The final stanza echoes the first one. We hear that chant-like wording again and repetition. The repetition can be seen as Blake not wanting us to forget what he is saying and realizing if he says it more than once it will latch onto our minds making us hard to forget.
The Tyger is a gnostic poem showing that there is a God that made the world corrupt, sinful, and broken. God is both a Tyger and Lamb, and there are parts of us that are innocent and other parts that are mysterious. Blake pointed that out in The Tyger and showed that no one person is perfect. There are parts of us that are disappointing but it is something we have to accept and since we cannot change it we need to be able to accept it as a person then being able to have society accept us.