Lines between good and evil are often drawn in literature. However, in William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” the line is not clearly drawn. This poem asks whether good and evil stem from the same source. The poem introduces the theme that there is a duality in everything. The speaker of the poem is questioning God and his intentions for creating the tiger. Blake also included an illustration portraying the tiger in a different way.
The “Tyger” is introduced in the first stanza as lurking in dark forests. This gives the immediate impression of being something dark and frightening. While the tiger is something to be feared, it is symmetrical, perfect. The poem follows a strict meter which is only broken by the word symmetry adding weight, importance and strangeness to the word. The first stanza introduces the idea of good and evil, the tiger is introduced as being something perfect and frightening. The second stanza then describes the tiger as having a fire in his eyes which lends to the idea of the tiger being fierce. At the same time the author has illustrated the poem with the image of a gentle looking tiger. The speaker also does not know where this fire came from, he attributes it to either a depth or the sky, showing that though the speaker does not know where the fire came from but he believes it to be otherworldly. The otherworldliness of the fire leads the speaker to ask the creator why he gave the tiger this fire.
The internal workings of the tiger are also questioned. In the third stanza, the speaker asks why the heart of the tiger was twisted and made hard. Then the tiger was alive and has hands and feat that can inspire dread. The next stanza asks about the brain of the tiger, which is described as something being created by a smith using hammers, anvils, furnaces and chains. These tools are modern technology which shows that the tiger is created using modern methods, and is more efficient.
Upon viewing the final product, this fierce tiger, the speaker wonders if God is happy. The speaker wonders how the same God who created the lamb, a gentle pure white creature, could have created this fierce killing machine. God has the ability to create fierce and gentle creatures; showing the duality of God, he is able to be fierce and gentle. This explains the pictures of the tiger in which seems gentle while being described in the poem as being something that seems darker.