The Lamb and The Tyger by William Blake - Free Essay with Poems Analysis

The two poems contrast each other but focus on the dual nature of the Christian God. After reading the two poems a lot of symbolism has been used in the poems and it is important first to analyze both poems then one can be in a position to point out the skills used by William Blake to portray the dual nature of God.

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From the first poem, Blake covers the life of a lamb and speaks to it as a small child. The child approaches the lamb and starts asking many questions starting with who created the beautiful lamb. It is interesting thinking of the poem in the shoes of the lamb. Where a small child approaches you as you feed and starts asking questions such as who gave us life. Then in the next stanza, the child answers all these questions and says that the one responsible for creating us was at some point also called a lamb. The first stanza of the poem is filled with questions which are answered in the second stanza by the same child. Looking at the first stanza, the child's questions seem all believable since it is possible for a child to talk to a lamb but in the second stanza, this changes as the child indicate that one who created us including the humans is a mighty being a thing one could not expect from a child (Rose, Brianna, et al). This shows the understanding of the Christian religion for the child. A close analysis of the poem reveals that the lamb is Jesus due to the Christian ways seen within the characters of it.

He is seen as a Lamb due to his meekness, gentleness, and peace. Also, the image of a child can be associated with Jesus. As per the bible, Jesus displays a unique solicitude for children. The dual nature of God is both the spiritual nature of God as per the Christian values, and when the birth of Jesus Christ took place, it portrayed one of the other human nature of God.

Through the poem, 'The Lamb" by Blake both representation of Jesus in different forms depict the dual nature of God. The peaceful spirit represented by the lamb covers one nature of God. The poem sees the light in the life of people and the love of the good that is in the world. The human nature of God, on the other hand, is carved out by the little naive child. The heart of a child with no traces bad for all creatures. The child approaching the lamb so as to admire its beauty and asks it who clothed it as a sign of admiration. From the bible after God was done with the creation of everything he looked at his work and admired it saying it was lovely and beautiful (Swinburne, Algernon). The dual nature of God is a thing Christians look up to, and Blake does manage to cover this precisely well in the poem.

The Tyger by William Blake, on the other hand, covers the flip side of good. Looking at the first poem, Blake covers more on the good of the world and also uses the child and the lamb to portray all this. In the poem, Blake fails to account for the presence of evil and the suffering in the world. One would feel that this fails to capture both sides of the world which is good and the bad. From the second poem, Blake manages to cover all this. This makes both poems complement each other. The poem "The Tyger" is more of questions. Less of the questions are answered but leaves us thinking of trying to give answers to them. The tiger is stunning which is a reflection of its creator. Then the question comes in ho such a beautiful creature would be so destructive. This comes but the world we live in. As art, it's always a reflection of its creator. So for the tiger's case, we are left wondering if the creator is destructive as his creation.

This explains the nature of God and embraces the undeniable evil and violence exists in the world. The poem tries to show the existence of both beauty and horror. The world we live in has a taste of all this, and it's unexplainable the nature of God. As per the statement that the love of God is the fear of God as it is his nature. The tiger is used to symbolize the evils of the world and the beauty of the world at the same time. The question of who created such a creature and would this have been accidental also leaves the reader wondering, but the comparison between the lamb and the creature shows the undeniable truth of the fact that evil is present in the world (Ferber, Michael, et al). The capability of the existence of good in the world shows the possibility of evil in the world as well. Evil within the tiger is seen to be both physical and morally as the writer tries to encompass the two within the poem.

As we embrace the evil in the world we are left questioning who was responsible for the creation of a creature like the tiger is it the same person responsible for the creation of the lamb. Such a huge contrast between the two. The dual nature of God is seen from this view of both scenarios. A lamb has been focused on as such a loving and peaceful creation as well as beautiful. On the other hand the tiger with all its glowing beauty its burning eyes and destructive nature questions the intentions of its creator (Blake).

It is possible for this to be assigned for us that the same creator who has the ability to create such beauty has the ability to destroy all the beauty. Also looking at the symbolism used for the lamb and the tiger we as humans have the capability being as good as the lamb, Loving, peaceful and caring. Contrary to this, human beings have the capability of transforming from such loving creatures to destructive creatures. This can be witnessed in our world today. We have come across human with the ability to show o much good, and on the other hand, we have met other creatures with no sense of human love left in within them. The dual nature of God is seen through both the poems and William Blake uses both poems so as to complement each other and cover both sides of the world. As Christians the existence if the dual nature of God is a thing that helps understand God more, from the poem s by Blake we are able to understand this and the use of symbolism paints a clear picture of what the dual nature of God clearly stands for.

Work Cited

Blake, William. Tyger, tyger. Penguin UK, 2016.

Ferber, Michael, et al. "Stephen C. Behrendt, George Holmes Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, wrote The Moment of Explosion: Blake and the Illustration of Milton (1983) and Reading William Blake (1992), and edited History and Myth: Essays on English Romantic Literature (1990). He is coeditor, with Harriet Kramer Linkin, of Approaches to Teaching British Women." Blake, Politics, and History 1 (2015): 377.

Makdisi, Saree. Reading William Blake. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Rose, Brianna, et al. "TYGR 2017: Student Art and Literary Magazine." (2017).

Swinburne, Algernon Charles. William Blake: A Critical Essay. Library of Alexandria, 2017.