SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF THE TYGER IN SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE

 SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF "THE TYGER"

Summary

In this counterpart poem to “The Lamb” in Songs of Innocence, Blake OFFERS another view of God through His creation. Whereas the lamb implied God’s tenderness and mercy, the tiger suggests His ferocity and power. The speaker again asks questions of the subject: “What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” The questions continue throughout the poem, with the answers implied within the final question that's not a repetition of an earlier question: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” the identical God who made the gentle, obedient lamb also made the frightening, powerful, and bloody-minded tiger, and whereas the lamb was simply “made,” the tiger is forged: “What the hammer? what the chain?/ In what furnace was thy brain?”

Analysis

The use of smithing imagery for the creation of the tiger hearkens to Blake’s own oft-written contrast between the plants and also the industrialism of the London of his day. While the creator remains God, the means of creation for thus dangerous a creature is mechanical instead of natural. Technology could also be a benefit to mankind in many ways, but within it still holds deadly potential.

In form and content, "The Tyger" also parallels the Biblical BOOK of Job. Job, too, was confronted by the sheer awe and power of God, who asks the suffering man an analogous series of rhetorical questions designed to steer Job to not a solution, but to an understanding of the constraints inherent in human wisdom. This limitation is forced into view by the ultimate paradox: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" Can the God of Innocence even be the God of Experience? If so, how can mere mortals, trapped in one state or the opposite, ever hope to know this God?

"The Tyger" follows an AABB rhyme scheme throughout, but with the somewhat problematic first and last stanzas rhyming "eye" with "symmetry." This jarring near rhyme puts the reader in an uneasy spot from the start and returns him thereto at the top, thus foreshadowing and concluding the experience of reading "The Tyger" in concert of discomfort.