"The Lamb" vs "The Tyger" - Questions/Analysis

 

 

 

 

 

The Ancient of Days

William Blake
1794; Relief etching with watercolor, 23.3 x 16.8 cm;

British Museum, London

 

 

 

 

 

02 March 2005

 

"Song of Experience":  The Lamb

"Song of Experience": The Tyger

 

  William Blake

 

 

 

1. “Song of Innocence”: The Lamb vs. “Song of Experience”: The Tyger

 

 

           “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” illustrate an extreme contrast with emotional changes between “Song of Innocence” and “Song of Experience.” In “The Lamb,” an innocent child asks blissfully to a little lamb, “Making all the vales rejoice?” The little child has a firm belief of God, “For he calls himself a Lamb.” “We are called by his name.” The pure child in “The Lamb” has full of joyfulness and delightfulness, and praises to God, “Little Lamb, God bless thee!” A drastic contrast in “The Tyger,” its tone is deadly dropped down to fearful outcries. “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” To amplify this, did he the same God who made the Lamb make terrible like this? While the innocent child has grown older, he has been seeing the real world where unjustness happened without correcting to good. Consequently, the grown child lost his faithful trustiness toward God who gave his life; in fact, he has full of bitter resentment against God who let unfairness happen without stopping them. Hence, he can not hear “such a tender voice” any more; he sees God as dread hand & dread feet, instead. He also sees the ruthless world where his ｅxpressions are the hammer, the chain, furnace, and the anvil, “Dare its deadly terrors clasp?” As “burning bright in the forests of the night,” there is no device for solutions; it remains constant questions after questions in “water’d heaven with their tears.”

 

 

 

 

2. Topic and Thesis Statement for Essay #1

 

 

           My Essay #1: Connections’ topic will be No. 8. Which of our readings might be the most beneficial in helping us understand the contrary states of Blake’s chimney sweeper poems and/or the paradox behind the “Lamb” and “Tyger”?

           I would like to discuss Blake’s poems with “THE BUDDHA – Meditation: The path to Enlightenment.” From “The Tyger,” Blake ended with unsolved question “What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?,” and left up to reader to find out. I like to challenge with BUDDHA, the most beneficial to understand Blake’s poems.