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What Does The Tyger Mean

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The Tenacious Tyger and his Ceaseless Creator Perhaps William Blake’s most famous poem, “The Tyger” was published in 1794 in the collection Songs of Experience. Although the poem differs from the Romantic Era poem in terms of its formatting, “The Tyger” otherwise remains consistent with common Romantic themes such as nature and symbolism. Aside from the Romantic commonalities, the poem also contains a smorgasbord of poetic devices, including allusions, synecdoche, and dichotomies which greatly aid in the effectiveness of Blake’s poem. Generally, a poem in the Romantic Era would demonstrate an experimental form, meaning it would not rhyme and it was not bound to traditional forms or meters. And while “Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright” (lines …show more content…

The first quatrain not only sets up the foundation of the mystery by asking who “could frame thy fearful symmetry,” (line 4) but sets a frightened tone, as well. The fact that the narrator asks who “could” create the Tyger, rather than simply asking who did, allows the reader to infer that this creature is far more dynamic than imagined. In addition, the creator not only has the physical ability to create the being with his hand, but the mental capacity to imagine and visually see his ideas, with his eye. The narrator’s questions become more demanding as the poem progresses and his inquiries suggest that the creator must be omnipotent in order to create such a threatening creature. The use of synecdoche in the poem adds a higher level of suspense than any other element in the work. Throughout the poem, the creator is described by disconnected body parts as opposed to an entire entity, which intensifies the curiosity of who, or what, the creator is because the reader is not able to create a complete picture in their …show more content…

However, as the narrator continues to talk about what type of entity would have the ability to create such a Tyger in quatrain three, the reader interprets that the Tyger possesses more dangerous qualities than good. In quatrain four, the narrator makes another possible allusion to the Bible in the first line, “When the stars threw down their spears,” (line 17) by comparing the stars to angels and God and their spears to Satan, this line could be alluding to Satan being shunned from heaven. Following that, the narrator says, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” (line 20) which not only alludes to the Bible once again, but a previous poem of Blake’s, as well. Blake could be referring to God making the Lamb, and returning to the question of whether the Tyger’s creation was holy or not. (There is also a parallel with Frankenstein when the speaker says, “Did he smile his work to see?” (line 19) because it is being questioned whether or not the creator was proud of his work, much like when Frankenstein finishes his creation and is

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