The Tyger: William Blake
William Blake’s Poem “The Tyger” informs his readers with his own thoughts about industrialization and how he feels about the changing world that he lived in. His poem doesn’t necessarily point out what it means at a first glance, but it contains multiple paradoxes and contradictions.
One particular contradiction that was addressed is found in stanza 3 and 4. Stanza 3 delivers to us a tiger that is full of life. The whole stanza described of a typical tiger: fearsome yet full of awe and wonder because of the dominance that it naturally claims. The tiger has shoulders, sinews in his heart, heart beats, dreadful hands and feet. It seems very much alive. Beauty is found within the creation of this tiger and glory to whoever was responsible for the creation of this magnificent creature. But, the questions that Blake asks in stanza 4 suddenly shifts to a tiger that is somewhat robotic. It almost seems as though Blake is questioning where the tiger came from, suddenly confused at how a tiger is really created, believing that the tiger is manmade. Blake questions the tiger as though he knows with no doubt that the tiger was assembled together by a blacksmith in his little shop. The hammer pounded out dents and little flaws, the chain kept him from getting out of control, the heat of the anvil burns and create the brain, and the anvil used to screw in nuts and bolts to hold the tiger’s dreadful hands and feet together. The poem described the tiger as created by industrial processes because he wants his audience to see the unnatural world in his view.
He uses the robotic figure to mock mankind. Mankind has taken a beautiful creature such as a tiger and turned it into something that has no flesh, no heart beat; there is no life within it at all. Everything that lived or had life was holy to Blake. Even a ferocious being as a tiger was seen holy to Blake. Thus, everything else that fell under him is holy too. If the tiger’s natural ways are taken away from him, everything else must have lost their beauty also.
The poem was more impressed with the lamb than the tiger. If God made the tiger, why in the world would God make an animal so pure and innocent to be hunted down by beasts? The presence of the tiger and the lamb on the same earth doesn’t seem right to Blake. It’s like God made a mistake putting these two creatures together. His childish tone throughout the poem concluded in a refrain. He again asks who exactly created the tiger. His questions again are left unanswered for his readers to think about because he himself is confused.