In writing "The Tyger," William Blake wanted to express the organic connection between ourselves and the natural environment. When Blake wrote the poem, Britain was experiencing a great deal of economic and social change with the Industrial Revolution in full swing. During this time, people became disconnected from the natural world, especially those rural-dwellers who left the countryside to seek work in the burgeoning industrial towns and cities.

The arresting figure of the tiger is a reminder of what we have lost in the onward rise towards industrialization. Blake wants us to reconnect to the wonders of nature, to experience awe in the face of God's creation. All creatures, whether fearsome predators like the tiger or gentle creatures like the lamb, share the same creator, as indeed do we.

Yet all too often we separate ourselves from creation, arrogantly asserting ourselves over against the world. In other words, we have lost that primal sense of awe which our ancestors once had towards the natural world and every living thing in it. Indeed for Blake, nature itself is a living force, a force that is worthy of worship and respect. But we can only adopt the appropriate attitude towards nature if we see ourselves as an essential part of it.

One possible interpretation of William Blake's "The Tyger" is that the eponymous tiger represents the spirit of the industrialization process that Britain was witnessing at the time the poem was written. The factories at the heart of this process would remain open twenty-four hours a day, and the lights of the burning furnaces seen through the windows of the factories at night may have resembled the orange and black stripes of a tiger.

Throughout the poem, the speaker seems to be asking what can be inferred about men—or about God—that this "fearful" and "deadly" process is allowed to happen. Indeed, the speaker wonders "What dread hand" could possibly have created this process, and whether the God who made the lamb could also have made this tiger. He wonders too whether the God who made the tiger did "smile his work to see." These questions seem loaded with an incredulous and accusatory tone.

As a Romantic poet, William Blake would have been horrified at the industrialization process. Many Romantic poets, like Blake and Wordsworth, wrote (particularly prescient) poems to warn that this process would destroy the natural world. The collection from which this poem is taken, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, describes two different worlds. The first world, of innocence, is the world before industrialization, and the second world, of experience, is the world during industrialization. "The Tyger" is taken from the Songs of Experience section of the collection.

The central theme of William Blake's "The Tyger," published in his Songs of Experience collection in 1794, is the philosophical problem of evil. The problem of evil, explained here from a Christian framework, concerns the issue of reconciling the existence of evil in the world with an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and benevolent God. Stated simply, the problem asks why God would allow evil to exist in the world if he has complete control over the world and cares for our well-being.

How is this theme evoked in the poem? In the first stanza, the tiger is described as frightening and dangerous; the tiger is "burning," and resides in "forests" at "night" (1-2). In the next two lines, the poem's speaker asks what "immortal hand or eye," or divine agent, "framed thy fearful symmetry," or made the tiger so frightening in the first place.

The speaker then fears that whoever made the fearful tiger must be fearful as well; he asks "What dread hand? And what dread feet?" allowed the tiger to exist at all (12). Finally, the speaker asks, "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" (20). Since "Lamb" is capitalized, the speaker here refers not only to a young sheep, but also to the "Lamb of God:" Jesus Christ. The speaker finally realizes that God himself must have made the tiger and thereby allowed evil to exist in the world. The last stanza's refrain implies that the speaker is horrified by this epiphany and is unable to continue his line of thought. Through juxtaposing the images of the tiger and "the Lamb" then, Blake explores the philosophical problem of evil.

William Blake's poem "The Tyger," written much like a metaphysical conceit, has as its theme the mysteries of God's creations. 

It is a God who is inscrutable to man that has created such a being as a tiger, for in man's limited knowledge, God is all-good. Thus, in the awareness that his knowledge is limited, the speaker wonders in a series of rhetorical questions about the mysteries of good and evil. For instance, he asks the tiger,

Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Perhaps, it is only man who has defined good and evil in the context of what he knows. Or, is evil, perhaps, named only by man so that he can recognize good in its contrast since his powers of cognition are not that of the Creator's? Clearly, Blake's poem demonstrates his belief that man must witness, examine, and resolve the apparent paradoxes of life. Critic Alfred Kazin writes of Blake,

In "The Tyger," he presents a poem of triumphant human
awareness, and a hymn to pure being.

 

Additional Source: 

Kazin, Alfred. "Introduction". The Portable Blake. The Viking Portable Library.

What is the central idea of William Blake's poem "The Tyger"?

The Tyger by William Blake is a poem exploring the nature of the Creator. Throughout the poem, the speaker lists attributes of the tyger and then poses a question about how such a thing could be made. For example, in the fourth stanza, the speaker says:

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

Here, he is questioning what it would take, and who would be able, to create something that strikes fear into those who see it.

The fifth stanza closes on this line: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" This question helps to illuminate the purpose of the poem, as we understand that the speaker is struggling to believe that a Creator who could fashion something as peaceful and sweet as a lamb could also create something as powerful and deadly as a tiger.

What is the central idea of William Blake's poem "The Tyger"?

"The Tyger" was one of the poems contained in William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, published in 1794. In this poem, Blake is trying to understand the nature of the Creator by examining his creations. Thus the central idea is religious, striving to grasp the nature of the divine.

The poem is essentially a series of queries address by the narrator to the Tyger. The narrator observes the sheer magnificence of the Tyger and its "fearful symmetry" and wonders what sort of Creator would have the courage and skill to create such an animal.  The narrator also wonders whether the same Creator could have created the fierce Tyger and the meek and gentle Lamb. 

Some critics see this contrast as essentially dualistic, a speculation on whether there must be two opposing divine forces, one harsh or even evil and the other benevolent and gentle, to account for the presence of both good and evil in the world. 

What is the universal theme of Blake's "The Tyger"?

A poem about the nature of divine creation, Blake's "The Tyger" investigates the notion of creative intent and inspiration in a rather original religious context. The poem also invites us to consider what it is, exactly, that the tyger symbolizes - what significance do we find in the tyger as a counterpart to the lamb?

Perhaps the most telling line of Blake's "The Tyger" comes at the end of the fifth stanza: "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"

“'The Tyger' is a Blakean song of experience that is to be contrasted with its contrary song of innocence, entitled 'The Lamb.' Questions also recur in 'The Lamb': 'Little Lamb, who made thee?/ Dost thou know who made thee?'” (eNotes).

Blake's poem poses a series of questions that appear direct yet which are not easily answered. How are we to understand or envision a creative force that is manifested in the form of a terrifying beast? 

"'The Tyger' is about the divinity and mysterious beauty of all creation and its transcendence of the limited human perspective of good and evil that the miseries of human experience condition one to assume" (eNotes).

Importantly, Blake's poem invites us to reflect on the limits of our own perspectives and our own moral vision. We might read "The Tyger" as being about both divine creation and artistic creation, about a cosmic will and about human will as well. 

The poet who penned "The Lamb" also created "The Tyger." Seen in this light, Blake's questions take on a rhetorical significance within the poems themselves, referring to his own creative process even while the poems also touch on notions of the nature of divine creation.

One way to rephrase Blake's questions in "The Tyger" is to ask what aspects of divine will are reflected in the tyger? If the tyger is a product of a divine creative force, what does that say about the nature of the divine creative force?

Reality, for William Blake, is something that supercedes simple moral categories. 

"The mystery of reality does not lend itself to simple, pat formulations of everyday statements" (eNotes).

In his metaphysics, the energetic forces of life (which include creativity, art, and greater passions too) cannot be honestly held back by the arbitrary constraints of religious doctrine. The "mind-forged manacles" of categorical social thought function as illusory, ideological distortions of a larger, clearer truth.

Blake's "The Tyger" leads us to ask whether or not the lamb and the tyger really are so different after all. If they are both manifestations of the same creative force, might it be best and most accurate to see them for their similarities instead of focusing on their differences?

As symbols, these two animals superficially seem to represent two different sets of ideas. Yet Blake's poetry, taken as a whole, suggests that this is only a superficial symbolic difference and that in a final account the tyger and the lamb represent exactly the same thing.  

What is the universal theme of Blake's "The Tyger"?

One theme central to Blake's "The Tyger" is the identity of God or the Creator.  The speaker asks what kind of creator would create a tiger?  What kind of creator would form such a powerful and destructive creature?

When read in contrast with "The Lamb," which is the partner poem of "The Tyger," the poem suggests that no dichotomy or separation exists between good and evil, between gentle and fierce.  The Creator is a mixture of the two, as are natural creatures and human beings.  The same Creator that made the lamb made the tiger.

Tyger!  Tyger!  burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The answer is a Creator or Immortal who is a mixture of all.  He creates the tiger the same as he creates the lamb.  Evil is not evil, as we normally think of it.  It is just another side of good.  That idea is certainly "universal."

What is the theme statement for William Blake's "The Tyger"?

Blake's "The Tyger" appears in his Songs of Innocence and Experience as a song of "experience." These poems appear to be nursery rhymes, but in fact the idea at work behind Blake's "innocence and experience" dichotomy has to do with the nature of good and evil, and God's relationship to man.

In the case of "The Tyger," the theme is essentially expressed as a question in the first stanza, "What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" (l. 2-4) In other words, what are we mortals to infer about God (the "immortal hand or eye") given the dreadful nature of the tiger?

The next three stanzas simply rephrase this question over and over, with ever escalating language. The images in this section of the poem compare God to a blacksmith, fashioning the tiger (and, presumably, all creation) at the forge:

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? (l. 13-16)

Stanza five turns the question around, asking to know if God "smiled his work to see," suggesting that might have taken a perverse joy in creating a deadly animal. The final stanza returns to the question posed originally, only rephrasing it as "What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" By substituting the word "dare" for the more neutral "could" of the first stanza, the poet clearly is expressing outrage at the existence of evil in the world, and challenging the moral authority of God.

What is one of the themes of William Blake's poem "The Tyger?"

One theme of Blake's poem is the mystery of how a God that could create a creature as gentle as a lamb—and identify the lamb with his son, Jesus—could also make a creature as fearful and bloodthirsty as a tiger.

The poem thus explores two sides of God. One side is gentle, comforting, and inviting—like a lamb. The other is sublime: it strikes us with fear and awe.

The tiger, because of the fear it raises in us, is an example of the sublime. The sublime, usually associated with nature, includes those elements of the natural world that are both beautiful and yet fill us with a sense of God's grandeur and vast might. Mighty waterfalls crashing down or the view from icy mountain tops could fill us with a sense of awe and terror. So does Blake's tiger.

In the poem, the speaker wonders why God is both so gentle as to create the lamb and so terrifying as to create a dangerous predator. The poem dwells in the space of mystery, not offering answers but asking questions.

What is one of the themes of William Blake's poem "The Tyger?"

The divine source of creation is a theme in William Blake's poem "The Tyger," keeping suit with Blake's Pre-Romantic aesthetic and simultaneous interest in the Bible and irreverence toward the Church of England.

The poem questions, "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" In other words, the poet is questioning what kind of god could be responsible for creating a creature who is inherently destructive in nature. This is an especially potent question within the context of the Lamb referenced in the fifth stanza. How could a divine creator create two such seemingly opposite animals--one that is the pinnacle of innocence and one that is a killer? Blake does not provide any answers to these questions, but rather simply opens a dialogue for a discussion of this duality.

This poem is ultimately also a reflection of the limitations of human understanding, particularly as we try to discern the moral questions of good versus evil.