The Tyger by William Blake

William Blake can be accepted as the forerunner of the Romantic movement, but he is not among the group including Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. He is just a forerunner. He is older than them. He lived in the same period but he started writing before the others. He is mostly known for 2 collections of poems; Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. They are important collections for an introduction to romantic poetry. In these works, he shows us two sides of the human soul, he talks about nature, children, the good, and the evil. While writing poems, he also produced paintings. He was not so famous while he was alive but in the 20th century, his works became popular. It is generally easier to read his poems. He uses “childish language” generally. 

Stanza 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?” = The speaker asks questions about creation. This is a rhetorical question. While asking these questions he constracts the tyger and the lamb. The Tyger represents songs of experience, he is the symbol of experience and The Lamb represents songs of innocence. So he is referring to another poem that he wrote; The Lamb. In the 3rd stanza of the Tyger; “And what shoulder, & what art, /Could twist the sinews of thy heart? /And when thy heart began to beat. /What dread hand? & what dread feet?” = Again he asks rhetorical questions. Dread means causing fear. There is a creator and he is conscious of the existence of such a creator. With these questions, he implies that the tyger is a terrifying creature and this shows him that the creator must also be as strong and dazzling as the tyger. In these collections, there are similar poems, in the songs of innocence, we have the lamb and in the songs of experience, we have the tyger. They complete each other. So, this is about creation and this created animal (tiger) by god is powerful and wild, so god must also be powerful because that is the main theme. 

“But the poem is about not only creation but also destruction. The Tyger emerges as a quite violent figure: burning and fearsome” -Wolosky = She underlines the fact that there is no enjambment in the poem. Here, the sentence itself ends in a line. She also talks about paratactic syntax, which means the use of simple grammar, there is no conjunction. She says this poem is about creation, “It addresses how immortal and mortal hands and eyes construct something. On this level, the “and,” “and,” “and” construction pursues, in fact enacts the process of creation, part by part, so that by the poem’s end the whole Tyger has been put together: eyes, sinews, heart, hand, feet, brain. This Tyger is, according to the poem, the work of some creator.” For example in the 2nd stanza; “In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes?” In the 3rd stanza; “And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart?” The Tyger is created part by part but she also says "But the creator himself is constructed in the process as well. Each stanza names and places not only parts of the Tyger, but also the hand, eye, grasp, and smile of the creator.” Like stanza 1; “What immortal hand or eye” = this is the hand and eye of the creator. Stanza 4; “what dread grasp” or stanza 5; “Did he smile his work to see?” = These belong to the creator. Within the poem, we witness the creator of the tiger and also the construction of the creator. That is why this poem is about the question of creation and it makes sense when we look at the questions that the speaker asks; “What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry” = he is asking who created you, that is the main central point. Wolosky says this poem is not only about creation but destruction because the tiger is a violent figure. After all, he is called burning and fearful even in the first stanza. Not only the tiger but the creator is also violent, he is called a dread grasp. “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” This is the last line of stanza 5. He is asking this question to the tiger. At this point, we see a relationship between creation and destruction or good and evil, horror and beauty. Wolosky says; “Within this syntactic string lurks the religious and philosophical problem of theodicy, how to explain God’s goodness despite the existence of evil. As the poem suggests, the mere coexistence of creation and violence does not explain or justify evil, but rather intensifies the need to do so.” Theodicy means the vindication of god’s goodness and rightness in the creation of evil. If god is good, why did he create evil? Theodicy is trying to justify this. The speaker is trying to understand what creator created such a fearful thing.