Compare and contrast between the poem 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger' by William Blake

 

Q.06. Compare and contrast between the poem 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger' by William Blake

 

Ans:    “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” are both representative poems of William Blake. They celebrate two contrary states of human soul – innocence and experience.

 

“The Tyger” shows how experience destroys the state of childlike innocence and puts destructive forces in its place. It beaks the free life of imagination, and substitutes a dark, cold, imprisoning four, and the result is a deadly blow to blithe human spirit. The fear and denial of life which come with experience breed hypocrisy which is as grave a sin as cruelty. When innocence is destroyed by experience, God creates the tiger (i.e. fierce forces) to restore mind to innocence.

 

“The Lamb” celebrates the divinity and innocence not merely of the child but also of the least harmless of creatures on earth, the lamb. The child asks the lamb if it knows who has created it, given it its beautiful and sweet voice. He does not wait for the answers, but answers the questions himself. He refers to the meekness and gentleness of God, the lamb’s creator. His descent to the earth as a child (i.e. his incarnation) and his own is the lamb’s divinity. He concludes wishing the lamb God’s blessing.

 

 

Both ‘the tiger’ and ‘the lamb’ are created by God. “The lamb” represents the milder and gentler aspects of human nature, the tiger its harsher and fiercer aspect. The lamb represents the calm and pleasant beauty of creation, the tiger its fearful beauty. The gross contrariety between the nature of the lamb and tiger makes the poet ask – “Did he who made the lamb make thee.”

 

In “The Tyger”, he sets about the poem with a question that strikes terror in us,

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry.”

 

In “The Lamb” Blake sets about his poem with the innocent question,

“Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?”

 

The tiger is God’s wrath, as the lamb His love. The tiger is a ruthless, natural predator and it is man’s own “burning passion shut up within his natural body.” The questioner throughout cannot make out how such things come to be. The lamb, on the other hand, is an object of joy. Its bleat tills all the valleys with joy. The questions asked in The Lamb proceed from the simplicity and innocence of the questioner (the child). They have nothing of the baffling and enigmatic creature of the questions asked in “The Tyger”.

 

In both the poems Blake makes use of symbols to convey his ideas. In “The Lamb” he draws the symbol from the Bible, and takes use of such a familiar figure as the Lamb of God. In “The Tyger” the symbols, as in other poems of Songs of Experience, are of his own making (i.e. original). The tiger is Blake’s symbol for the fierce forces in the soul which are needed to break the bonds of experience. In “The forests of the night” in which the tiger lurks stands for ignorance, repression and superstition, and ‘fire’ for wrath.

 

Both the poems are remarkable for their lyricism their spontaneity of expression, and their intensity and sincerity of feeling. The diction of “The Tyger” is almost monosyllabic and the trochaic movement, freely used, contributes to the musical effects. The same is true of “The Lamb”. The rhythmical variation in the Lamb (three-stress couplets opening and closing each stanza, and four-stress central couplets) is effective in presenting the child’s delight in asking questions and the enumeration of the questions.

 

 

Or. Compare and contrast The Lamb and The Tyger.

Or, "Without contraries there is no progression."- How does Blake present the contraries in The Lamb and The Tyger.

 

Ans:    William Blake is famous before his twin books of poems. Songs of Innocence portrays the state of pure joy in childhood and Songs of Experience records the dilemma of adulthood troubles. Together they constitute an allegory of soul's journey through earthly life.

 

            "The Lamb" introduces a vision of unmixed joy of earthly life. The little lamb lives a blessed life of absolute joy. It has 'softest clothing, woolly bright'. It feeds and plays happily "by the stream and o'er the mead". Its life is far from all cares. It is a gift of God to His beloved creatures who has full faith in Him like Christ. Christ is like a lamb or Child of God. A child tells it about its creator as Jesus appears to tell people of God.

 

            The paradise of childhood is lost as one grows up and gets infected by earthly vices. The sunny meadows of little lamb turns into " the firest of the might". Life is overcast by gloom of sin and suffering. The threat of corruption cannot be handled by meek and mild virtues. "The Tyger" invokes the fierce power that can fight evil. The burning eyes of the tiger pierce the darkness and curb the spirit of the wicked. It denotes God's violent measure against aggression of evil.

 

            God is kind to the virtues, but hostile to the vicious. Life has its fascinating delights and terrible threats. Contraries of Innocence and knowledge make the journey of life so meaningful. Simplicity of diction and image in "The Lamb" reveals the side of joy. But a tone of terror and wonder is produced by suggestive vocabulary and subtle vision in "The Tyger". There are visions of heavenly smoothly where immense power conceives the terrible tiger or that of God's contentment over tiger. They are contrasted to the simple image of a child speaking to the lamb.