A Study of William Blake’s“The Lamb” and “The Tyger”
...e sins of man. The lamb is an animal that has to be led to water and green pastures so that maybe why a lamb is used to represent gentleness. Hirsch says, “As in the other poems of Innocence, the higher and lower in consciousness are identified though their mutual identity with God, who himself combines all levels of conscious life: as a helpless animal (the lamb), as an infant (the Christ child), and as deliberately omitted, along with all idea of an adult percipience that includes tears and pity. The poem emphasizes the joy of the immanent God, his mildness, and his tenderness, while the adult reader implicitly knows that this joy is owing to an atonement neither the child nor the lamb are aware of.” (177) On the other hand, the theme of “The Tyger” is experience and violence, because the tiger eating the lamb is part of the life cycle. The tiger eating the lamb may represent the experienced of the world eating the innocence. As a child grows older he losses his innocence as he gains more experience. The tiger feeding is very ferocious, violent and powerful. The tiger tends to tear his victim apart limb from limb. Price says, “The ‘forests of the night’ are the darkness out of which the tiger looms, brilliant in Jones 3 contrast; they also embody the doubt or confusion that surrounds the origins of the tiger” (45). The imagery in “The Lamb” is very gentle and mild. The hand of God creates “The Lamb”. It was molded like clay by a sculptor. A sculptor like God lovingly molds and shapes the clay into the form that he wants. In contrast the imagery in “The Tyger” is very powerful and forceful. “The Tyger” is forged. He is forged from the fire in the furnace with an anvil and hammer. “The Tyger” is forged from fire like the blacksmith forges iron into horseshoes and other metal objec...