The Tyger by
William Black
Tyger Tyger, burning
bright,
In the forests of the
night;
What immortal hand or
eye,
Could frame thy fearful
symmetry?
In what distant deeps or
skies.
Burnt the fire of thine
eyes?
On what wings dare he
aspire?
What the hand, dare seize
the fire?
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?
What the hammer? what the
chain,
In what furnace was thy
brain?
What the anvil? what dread
grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors
clasp?
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?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the
night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
"The Tyger" by William Blake was first
published in 1794 in Blake’s collection of poems “The Songs of Experience” as a
follow up to his “Songs of Innocence” published in 1789. It consists entirely of questions about the
nature of God and creation, particularly whether the same God that created
vulnerable beings like the lamb could also have made the fearsome tiger. The
tiger becomes a symbol for one of religion's most difficult questions: why does
God allow evil to exist? At the same time, however, the poem is an expression
of marvel and wonder at the tiger and its fearsome power, and by extension the
power of both nature and God.
Summary of the Poem
The speaker addresses the tiger and says that
his bright colors are shining in the night forest. He is asking him which
immortal hand could possibly have created such fearsome beauty of the tiger.
He is wondering where in the depths or the skies
the tiger’s fiery eyes were made. Whether the creator, whose hands dared to seize
the fire and create the fiery beauty of the tiger, had wings.
The speaker then tries to imagine the kind of
effort and skill required to create such a beast. He wonders that who would be
strong enough to build the muscular body of the tiger. He wonders that whose
hands and feet were the ones that made the tigers heart start beating.
The speaker once again tries to figure out about
the tools that the tiger’s creator must have used. He imagines that the brain
of the tiger was created in a forge. What terrifying being would be so daring as
to create the tiger?
The speaker mentions a time when the stars gave
up their weapons an rained their tears on heaven. At this time, wonders the
speaker, did the creator look at the tiger and smiled at his accomplishment? And
was the tiger made by the same creator who made the lamb?
Here again the speaker addresses the tiger and says
that the hands and eyes that made the tiger are not of some mortal being. It is
the work of some immortal power. And even for an immortal power this was a
daring task to frame the fearsome symmetry of the tiger’s body.
The Extension of Evil
Like its sister poem, “The Lamb,”
“The Tyger” expresses awe at the marvels of God’s creation, represented here by
a tiger. But the tiger poses a problem: everything about it seems to embody
fear, danger, and terror. In a series of questions, the speaker of “The Tyger”
wonders whether this creature was really created by the same God who made the
world’s gentle and joyful creatures. And if the tiger was created by God, why
did God choose to create such a fearsome animal? Through the example of the
tiger, the poem examines the existence of evil in the world, asking the same
question in many ways: if God created everything and is all-powerful, why does
evil exist?
The speaker tries to reconcile the
tiger's frightening nature with the idea of a loving God, but this attempt
leads only to a series of seemingly unanswerable questions. The tiger is
presented as an impressive figure and seems to be part of God’s design for the
world. It “burns brightly” and has a “symmetry,” a quality which Blake often
associates with beauty and purposeful intent on God’s part. But that “symmetry”
is also “fearful.” The tiger seems designed to kill and inflict pain. In other
words, the tiger behaves in a way that seems counter to God's laws and ethics.
The tiger’s association with fire (“burning brightly,” for example) underscores
this point—it’s visually impressive but dangerous to get close to.
The poem then meditates on the specific
moment of the tiger’s creation (“when thy heart began to beat”). It questions
God’s motivations in making the tiger, even considering the possibility that
it wasn’t actually God who made the tiger. The speaker
struggles to understand how a God that made the small, vulnerable lamb could
also choose to make a being that would surely eat the lamb given half a chance.
In other words, the speaker struggles to understand why God would create
something that seems to have destruction as its very purpose.
The poem leaves this line of questioning
unanswered, though the questions are themselves made very clear and stark. They
are, essentially, handed over to the reader to consider; the speaker
doesn’t know for sure why God has created something that seems
evil. However, by detailing the tiger’s fearsomeness and by directly comparing
it to the innocent and gentle lamb, the poem hints that perhaps both creatures
are necessary parts of God’s creation. That is, perhaps the majesty of God’s
work requires these kinds of oppositional forces. By giving
the tiger the same kind of consideration as the lamb, the speaker suggests that
without fear and danger, there could be no love and joy.
Opposites run throughout Blake’s
work—innocence and experience, the city and nature, childhood and adulthood—and
so the tiger and the lamb can be seen as part of this pattern. In order for God
to fully express his divinity, he has to create elements of the world that go
beyond the understanding of humanity. God proves its power precisely because He
acts in ways that humanity cannot fully comprehend.
The poem, then, is a deeply complex set
of questions that have no easy answers. There is no doubt, though, that the
poem wants its reader to consider the way in which the world seems to contain
both good and evil—to acknowledge these contradictory forces and question why
they exist, even though the answers may never be clear.
Creativity
Though "The Tyger" is
specifically about how the nature of God's creation can be reconciled with the
existence of the fearsome tiger, it's also about creativity more generally.
Everything about the creation of the tiger suggests effort, skill, artistry,
and imagination on the creator's part, suggesting that these qualities are
necessary to create anything as frighteningly beautiful as the tiger. What's
more, the speaker also hints that good creation—in art, for example—needs to
incorporate this more dangerous and intimidating side of the world. Without
that complexity, the poem suggests, a work of art won't be fully honest and
authentic.
The poem is itself, of course, the
product of intense creativity. Blake revised and revised this poem, trying to
pin it down to the exact form that best embodies its complicated questions.
This artistry is mirrored by some of the word choices made throughout. For
example, the "framing" of "symmetry" (lines 4 and 24)
suggests a visual artist or engraver (like Blake himself) making sure the
proportions of a project are correct. This type of language, which
characterizes creativity as both effort and skill, is also
found in the third and fourth stanzas. The fourth stanza in particular
describes a metal workshop, where beautiful things are made under intensely hot
and pressured conditions.
Along these lines, it's also important to
note the way in which the creation of the tiger is consistently linked with
fire. Indeed, the tiger itself is a kind of fiery creature, testament to the
intense imagination with which it was created. Imagination itself is
characterized as a kind of fire from which things can be created, if the
creator is brave, strong, and skilled enough. There may even be an allusion to
the Greek myth of Prometheus here, who tricked the gods, stealing fire and
giving it to humanity. However, Prometheus was not rewarded for his ingenuity;
instead, he was condemned to eternal punishment.
The imagination, the poem ultimately
suggests, is the location of a miraculous but dangerous kind of creative
strength. That's why it takes bravery—the willingness to "dare," as
the poem would put it—to create anything of any worth out of the "fire"
of creativity. This interpretation of creativity certainly rings true with the
story of Blake's life: for all his commitment, effort, and genius, he was
thought of more as a madman than a visionary during his lifetime.
The Tiger
Like the lamb in Blake's poem of the
same name, the tiger represents an aspect of God.
Whereas the lamb seems to suggest that God is Ioving and tender, in line with
the idea of a fatherly God overseeing his flock, the tiger speaks to another
side of God's character.
The poem gently suggests that God created
the tiger, but it also allows for the possibility that it was Satan who did so
(as one of the fallen angels that line 17 might be describing). Either way, God
is ultimately responsible, since (in the Christian tradition) God created
heaven, earth, and hell. The tiger is therefore symbolic of
God's ability to be violent and frightening, traits which seem to be at odds
with the creator who made the small and vulnerable lamb. The tiger, then, also
represents the unknowability of God: humankind can love God and be in awe of
his creations, but it can never hope to fully comprehend the way that God
operates within and conceives of the world.
"The Tyger" is ultimately less
about actual tigers (or other specific frightening things) and more about all
the large concepts that humanity finds it difficult to comprehend. God created
the world, but the world is full of suffering, pain, hatred and violence. The
tiger thus symbols those parts of God (and the world) that humans struggle to
reconcile with their idea of God.
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