The Tyger Research Paper

1120 Words5 Pages

Published along with other poems in the Songs of Experience collection in 1794, “The Tyger” is arguably the most famous poems written by William Blake. Including “The Tyger,” the poet wrote most of his poems using an inquisitive, and sometimes radical, tone. In most of his works, he often railed against oppressive institutions such as the monarchy or the church as well as the other cultural traditions like classism, racism or sexism, which he believed stifled passion or imagination (Blake and Waldman 7). “The Tyger” has endured copious amounts of scrutiny; not only from the metaphorical point but also from the literal perspective with various critics reviewing the author’s preferred dilemma of experience versus innocence. Blake’s poems have attracted various classes of readers, and each poem increasingly redirects the audience to some troubling questions. Essentially, in this poem, Blake asks the Tiger about its creator and some of the traits that this creator might possess. The better part of the poem questions the presence of god as well as his metaphysical attributes by referring to the multiple corporeal characteristics of Tiger as merely pure work of art. Blake wonders how god would have felt after creating the tiger, a feeling that to him is just hard to imagine. Other than the shift from “Could frame” to “Dare frame,” there is no big difference between the first and the sixth stanzas of the poem (Blake and Waldman 9). The stanzas are ultimately questioning the

Open Document