William Blake’s “The Tyger” poem is arguably his most famous work in this form of literature and in all of English. It is about a person who wonders how a tiger is created, but it is not merely a fun poem. “The Tyger” is a discourse on duality, with a speaker who is shocked at the existence of evil, attempting to rationalize a God who could create something so beautiful and yet so dark. The lack of answers to his questions communicates the difficulty of God’s ways and how they are beyond the ability of mortals to understand, one of the most difficult questions in life. The poet frames his message with the heavy use of symbolism, allegory, metonym, and synecdoche.

The theme of duality starts from the speaker’s first lines: “Tyger Tyger, burning bright / In the forests of the night” (Blake 1-2). The first line symbolizes the tiger’s great abilities, represented by it’s brightness. This taken together with the next line gives an image of the tiger as the king of the forest, with the night’s darkness contrasted with the tiger’s light. So here the tiger has both been introduced as the ruler of nature and dualized. The idea of the tiger “burning” also fits well with its orange fur, which stands out even in the nighttime. The next stanza starts with more duality: “In what distant deeps or skies / Burn the fire of thine eyes?” (Blake 5-6) The order of the lines and words suggest that the creature is not wholly evil and can be good too. This line can be seen as an allegory of creation, as one of the properties of fire is as an object of creation and birth, but it is also dangerous and can destroy. The speaker wonders where the tiger was created, and these two words can be seen as metonyms, with the “deeps” having connotations of evil/darkness and the “skies” of good/light. It is possible that the speaker is also wondering whether the tiger has set its eyes upon good or evil.

The speaker tries to rationalize the abilities and morality of God amidst good and evil. He questions how the creator of this animal can set himself up as the moral superior of the world: “On what wings dare he aspire? / What the hand, dare seize the fire?” (Blake 7-8) “Wings” can be seen as the metonym of morality, since angels have wings, and they allow soaring above other people, which has connotations of moral superiority. In the next line there is another synecdoche with “the hand” as the creator. The speaker asks how a moral God could dare to create such a creature and is thus challenging both God’s morality and existence. He is also speculating the bravery of this creator in seizing fire. The speaker then challenges the creator’s abilities when he says: “And what shoulder, & what art / Could twist the sinews of thy heart?” (Blake 9-10). Using synecdoches for the creator’s abilities, he wonders how he would be able to create the tiger. The parallelism between “shoulder” and “art” is important, saying that not only would physical strength be required for this act of creation, but also the supernatural, which only a God could possibly have. The supernatural can have connotations of black magic, another challenge to the creator’s morality. The speaker is in awe and disbelief at what is required for the creation. He never stops questioning the creator throughout the poem.

There is also a strong indication of the speaker’s identity. In the penultimate stanza, he asks “Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” (Blake 19-20) This connects this poem with “The Lamb” in “Songs of Innocence”. While he was an innocent boy in the previous poem with a naïve, benevolent view of the world represented by the Lamb, now that he is experiencing the darker side of the world with the Tiger, his view of the world has been shattered. He has lost his innocence and must now deal with his experience. And so must the stars, who “threw down their spears / And water’d heaven with their tears” (Blake 17-18). Stars are symbols for angels, with the fact that they wield “spears” giving us another clue for this. This line, therefore, may be an allusion to the fall at the Garden of Eden, when evil was introduced into the world. It is likely that the angels envisioned the terrible things that this tiger could do and felt much as the speaker does now, dropping their spears because they felt demoralized and defeated. In fact, both of them might be posing similar questions to God. Perhaps the protagonist has taken the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and he is tainted with evil like the tiger. But just as the tiger has a chance for redemption, so does the protagonist.

In the end, the speaker is convinced that God created the tiger but wonders why he would dare to. His questions are left unanswered, and with good reason. The existence of good and evil in the world, along with God’s role in it, is never easy for anyone, even the wisest and experienced to wrestle with, and is an age-old question. It is a question that can either drive a person to have faith in God or to not believe that He exists. But the poem does establish one thing: the duality and complexity of the world, using the perfect animal, a tiger which is so beautiful yet so deadly, to rationalize it.

Works Cited

Blake, William. “The Tyger” English 101, University of Toronto Mississauga, 2020.