William Blake's "The Tyger"

William Blake’s “The Tyger” offers various paradoxes dealing with a creative God and the creative process. The first stanza provides a question that sets up the theme of the poem, that of the Tyger’s origin. The speaker goes on in the following stanzas to describe how the Tyger was made, making frequent use of fire and metal. Lines like “What the hammer? What the chain?” give the image of a factory where the animal is being made. The speaker also asks if the same creator that made the Tyger also made the Lamb. The speaker is confused why a creator would make something that would be preyed upon by something else that he made. The speaker’s paradox leads him to associate the creation process to a less personal factory setting. I think that Blake uses his perception of the creation process as he did when he was a child, but as he grew older he may have been disillusioned. The speaker in the poem is confused why a creator would make one of his creations prey on another, leading me to believe that his perception of the creation process has changed since he was a child. The last stanza repeats the first one; the poem has come full circle. It seems as if the speaker has gotten nowhere in his search that began in the first stanza. All the questions that he asks throughout the poem have been left unanswered. Blake’s drawing of the Tyger strengthens my perception of the poem. Usually, Tygers are drawn as very powerful and natural animals, but Blake’s Tyger is skinny and robotic. Blake may be referencing his confusion about creation and its purpose. The drawing looks almost childlike, which alludes to the speaker’s perception of creation when he was younger. Also, the expression on the Tyger’s face is that of confusion and even worry. Blake may have put his own feelings about the subject on the Tyger’s face. I think the main purpose of the poem is to get others to think about creation and a creator. He wants people to question what they have been told all their lives and come to their own conclusions.