Student Question
In "A Poison Tree" by William Blake, does the speaker regret his anger? How do you know?
Quick answer:
The speaker in "A Poison Tree" does not clearly express regret for his anger. While his anger towards a friend dissipates when discussed, his suppressed anger towards a foe grows and results in fatal consequences. The poem's ambiguous conclusion leaves it open to interpretation whether the speaker feels remorse or satisfaction. The central theme highlights the dangers of suppressed anger and critiques hypocritical Christian goodness.
The speaker dissolves his anger with his friend by speaking about it. But when he has anger for his foe, he does not talk about it and it grows. The idea here is that if one suppresses his anger, it will fester and grow, maybe into something even worse.
In the second stanza, the speaker illustrates how he has developed and cultivated this anger. He uses the metaphor of raising/growing a plant as a way of describing how his anger grows. This anger grows to the point that it becomes something quite real: like an apple. This is a reference to the fruit in the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden. The speaker has grown his anger from an emotion and developed it into a object that is meant to tempt his foe. Here, Blake is also criticizing the Old Testament image of God as being more wrathful than...
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benevolent.
Up to this point, the poem is a description of how suppressed anger grows into something more vile and even more tangible. In other words, when anger is allowed to grow, it will not simply remain as an inner emotion in the speaker. The danger is that it will become something tangible, something real. In the final stanza, the foe "outstretched" seems to imply that his foe is dead. Thus, his anger has culminated in the ultimate act of real, physical violence and murder. But as for the notion of regret, the conclusion of the poem is ambiguous. One way to read the final lines is that he is "glad" to see his foe outstretched. And this could mean he is glad to see the foe dead or he is glad to see the foe in the process of reaching/stretching for the poisoned object that his (the speaker's) anger has become. However, if "glad" describes the morning, the speaker might be saying that in the glad morning, when he is thinking more clearly and with kindness, the sight of his dead foe gives him some remorse or regret. But this is not made clear. The conclusion can be interpreted in either of these two ways.
Beyond the description of the speaker's own feelings about his anger, this poem is a critique of hypocritical Christian goodness. Blake was critical of people who claimed to be good Christians but actually held hate in their hearts. The lesson is that keeping such hate can lead to actual wrath. Whether or not this critique of Christian hypocrisy ends with regret or happy vengeance is ambiguous. It is therefore, for the reader to decide.
How does "A Poison Tree" by William Blake depict anger?
I would think that the main theme of this excellent poem, which can be related to your question, can be clearly seen in the first stanza, which states:
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
There is a clear division here in terms of how we deal with anger and the consequences of anger that is not expressed and dealt with. In the first instance, the speaker, feeling angry towards their friend, yet clearly still considering that individiual to be a "friend," tells their friend about their anger, resulting in the end of that destructive emotion. However, the other instance narrates how the same speaker felt anger towards his "foe" but did not tell him about it, and thus the anger grows as a result, ending in the death of his foe. Clearly, this presents anger as an emotion that if it is not expressed will eventually "spew out" in your words and hurt both the object of anger and the person feeling the emotion himself.