Theological Questioning in Blake's "The Tyger": Form and Faith

Introduction: Evil, Creation, and the Problem of the Tiger

How can the world be good if there is evil in the world? How can the creator of the world — God — be good if evil beings and evil actions exist? The existence of evil animals in William Blake's "The Tyger" motivates the poet to ask potentially sacrilegious questions about the natural goodness of the earth's creation, and, by extension, the goodness of the world's creator. Blake structures his poem upon a series of questions that similarly compel the reader to ask penetrating theological questions and to enter a state of uncertainty about the goodness of the world — a state that is never resolved.

Blake suggests at times that Lucifer is responsible for the tiger, and for evil in the world. But by refusing to say definitively that the devil is responsible for evil — and that God and Christ are responsible for the nature of the lamb and the holy parts of the world — Blake implies the possibility that all of the world may not be good. The nursery-rhyme-like tone of the poem establishes a certain level of comfort that is continually undercut by the powerful imagery surrounding the poem's central animal. There is no answer to who the tiger's creator is, unlike the clearly benevolent creator of the lamb.

Trochaic Rhythm and the Pulsating Structure of the Poem

Rhythmically, "The Tyger" is structured on a series of trochees — the rhythmic opposite of the iamb. Unlike iambic pentameter, which attempts to emulate the patterns of human speech in an unstressed-then-stressed pattern, trochees are structured in a stressed-then-unstressed pattern, and there are only three metrical feet per line rather than five. This brevity and syllable stress creates a pulsating, forward-moving sense of energy throughout the poem. The pouncing rhythm mimics the movement of the tiger, and the reader is thus forced to enter the world of the tiger — and, by extension, the mind of the poet — as he or she reads.

The Nursery Rhyme Parody and Unanswered Origins

Nursery rhymes often have similar unnatural trochaic stressors, suggesting the sing-song, comforting, song-like quality familiar to young listeners. However, "The Tyger" functions as a kind of perverse nursery rhyme — it is decidedly not a "Song of Innocence." The rhyme suggests a parody of the nursery rhyme form, designed to unsettle rather than comfort. Like nursery rhymes or folk tales that answer questions of origin — who made the tiger, who made the lamb — "The Tyger" poses the same sorts of questions but tantalizingly refuses to answer them.

The animal lurks and waits but never makes a move, just as the answer to the beast's origin never arrives. This creates a sense of religious questioning in the mind of the reader, but not in a comforting or healthy sense, for no answer to the question of why evil beasts were created is ever offered, and the poem is never resolved, even at its close.

Conclusion: The Unresolved Drumbeat of Uncertainty

After the troubling question of whether the maker of the lamb also made the tiger, the poet throws up his hands, no wiser than before. At the end of this poem's pulsating drumbeat of questions in a sing-song of nursery rhymes, the poem returns to its beginning. The short metrical feet resume: "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" The repetition suggests the poet is no wiser about the goodness of God's creation, or the origin of the tiger, the lamb, and the world. The existence of evil in the world — in the form of the tiger — remains before his eyes, as does the unsettling possibility that the same creator who brought forth that evil also brought forth the lamb and all of existence.