Discussion Topic
The paradoxes and contraries of creation in William Blake's "The Tyger."
Summary:
In William Blake's "The Tyger," the paradoxes and contraries of creation are evident in the juxtaposition of the fierce, fearsome tiger with the benevolent, gentle lamb. This contrast raises questions about the nature of the creator who is capable of making both a predator and an innocent creature, highlighting the complexity and duality inherent in creation.
What is the paradox in William Blake's poem "The Tyger?"
The paradox in "The Tyger" is framed in a series of questions which the speaker asks the tyger. Simply put, the paradox is how a loving, all-knowing God, who makes things so wonderful and innocent as the Lamb (referring to the animal and Jesus Christ), could also make something as terrible and ferocious as the tyger (I'm keeping Blake's spelling).
Blake was consumed by paradoxes and dichotomies. He saw the world as a balance of light and dark, good and evil, innocence and experience. "The Tyger" is from that volume, Songs of Innocence and Experience, and is contrasted by the poem "The Lamb."
It is no mistake that Blake mentions the Lamb in "The Tyger." In the poem, "The Lamb," Blake employs a similar style which is asking the Lamb "who made thee?" The Tyger and the Lamb are contraries, just as light and dark are. Although Blake understands...
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or frames his understanding of the world in these paradoxes, he still does question why God created the world in dualities. In other words, does reality (or even Divine reality) require a balance of good and evil in order to exist at all?
How does "The Tyger" by William Blake relate to creation?
Blake was a very religious man and apparently a strict fundamentalist who believed that every word of the story of creation in Genesis in the Old Testament is literally true. Many people still believe that today. Some call themselves "Creationists." Their opponents are often called "Darwinians." If the biblical story of creation is literally true, then what must God be like to have created some of the beautiful and ugly, good and bad, innocent and malevolent things He created? Blake's entire poem seems to be speculating about what God must be like if He would want to create such a creature as a tiger. The essence of the poem is in the identical stanza at the beginning and the end.
Tyger, tyger, burning bright,
In the forest of the night;
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The tiger is both beautiful and wonderfully formed, and at the same time it is a terrible, ferocious creature that lives by killing. The splendid animal with its sinuous body seems to be stalking back and forth behind the lines of words in the poem. Its horizontal stripes sometimes hide it behind the lines of words, but it reappears between the stanzas, still stalking its prey.
If God created the tiger when he was creating everything else that exists, then what must He have been thinking? The same question applies to everything in the universe, if we believe the story of creation told in Genesis. God created spiders, rats, snakes (of course), diseases, human suffering of all kinds, human cruelty, death, war, earthquakes, tidal waves, droughts, plagues, all kinds of catastrophes. At the same time, God created incredible beauty throughout our world--beautiful flowers, beautiful landscapes, beautiful stars, clouds, trees, oceans, waterfalls--and many beautiful men, women and children.
"The Tyger" is one of Blake's "Songs of Experience." He dwells on the same idea from a different perspective in "The Lamb," which is one of his "Songs of Innocence." In "The Tyger" Blake asks the question which seems to haunt him (and which haunts many people today who are trying to reconcile science and traditional religion). Addressing the tiger he has described as so lethal and terrifying, and yet so fascinating, Blake asks: Did He who made the lamb make thee? The little lamb is the exact opposite of the sinister tiger. How could God create both creatures? What kind of a being is He?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Does thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Does thou know who made thee?Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is callèd by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are callèd by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!
References
How does Blake present the contraries of creation in "The Tyger"?
The poem "The Tyger" presents the contrasts inherent in creation by describing the fearsomeness of the so-called "tyger" and by comparing it to a lamb. This echoes common theological debates about how a loving God could create natural disasters or make bad people, which are questions that are also centered on trying to understand this contrast.
In the poem, Blake asks who could possibly have come up with such a beast and repeatedly invokes images of fire, which is associated with the devil. He then follows these associations by asking if the "tyger" really was created by the same eyes and hand that designed lambs, creatures which represent innocence and which a tiger would gladly eat. This all serves to highlight the contrast in creation: that good and evil come from the same source.