The Lion and the Lamb
Life is full of opposites. For every black there is a white, for every day there is a night. The poetry of Blake is no exception. His poem "The Lamb" is the opposite of "The Tyger". That is, the tyger is the predator, and the lamb the prey of the tyger. "The Tyger" conjures an image of being powerful, dark, and dangerous while "The Lamb" brings an image of reassuring peace. Blake uses these opposites to convey his feelings about various world events. At the time "The Tyger" was written, the Industrial Revolution was under way and Blake was upset by all the social injustice in the world. This explains why there are so many allusions in "The Tyger" and "The Lamb" to the Industrial and French Revolutions. Blake used these allusions because he wanted something the readers of his time could relate to and to show how he himself felt about these Revolutions as well. Blake's dislike of the Revolution leaked out blatantly into his poems. "What the hammer? What the chain...dare its deadly terrors clasp"? This mention of tools and chains alludes to the Industrial Revolution. The factories were the masters, and the people were its slaves, "chained" and unable to enjoy
The structure of both poems is very different and these dissimilar structures help Blake achieve his purpose. "The Tyger" is written in quatrains while "The Lamb" is written in longer verses. The first verse of "The Lamb" contains questions and the second the answers, implying that to every question there is an answer, to all unhappiness a moment of happiness will follow. The fact that the questions are answered gives off an image of structure which readers find comforting. life. The dark tone of the poem gives an image of the dull and depressing, less than satisfactory conditions of the factories and the harsh lives of those who worked in them. Aside from only the Industrial Revolution, "The Tyger" draws a link to French Revolution, as the revolutionaries where also known as "Tygers." The rhythm of "The Tyger," in contrast, is very different. Its verses speed along like the rapid beating of the heart when it's afraid, suggesting uncertainty and anxiety compared to the long, slow verses in "The Lamb." "The Tyger" has a set rhyme scheme, and the strict rhyme pattern and the swiftly moving rhythm could suggests the orderly marching of the soldiers in the French Revolution. "
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Approximate Word count = 800
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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