Lambs Archetypes

Lambs and Tigers; Can you be Both?
An Analysis of the Archetypes In Blake’s Poetry

Tigers; they’re fierce, independent, destructive, powerful and most importantly, experienced. Lambs are the complete opposite; considered gentle, pleasant, innocent, and inexperienced. William Blake discusses both of the archetypes in his poems “Lamb and “Tyger”. The poems discuss the archetypes of each animals; when they are paired together they suggest our own society can be divided into these two groups of people. The archetypes of the “Tyger” and the “Lamb” contrast each other in a way that allows us to categorize ourselves into one of the three groups. The three groups remain as the innocent of the world, the dominant of the world and the mixed ones of

At one point in the poem Lamb, the lamb is characterized by Blake on page 748 lines 9 and 10 as, “Softest clothing of delight, Gave thee such a tender voice”. This quote from the poem is alluding to the pure and innocent nature of the lamb. Lambs with ‘such a tender voice’ refers to the people in the world that do not have a mean bone in their body. The ‘lambs’ of the world are kind and compassionate and will always retain some of that child innocence. Blake would refer to them as the light of the world, pure to others as much as to themselves. Without the lambs in the world, we would have no innocence in the world, nor any compassion for others. These traits make lambs a very easy target to be taken advantage of by

They are the brutal ones of mankind when we tie it to human nature. Blake describes Tigers in his poem on page 749 lines 15 and 16, “What the anvil? What dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp?” He means to say that he doesn’t understand how god made something so evil in our world. Tigers are often described as having “fearful symmetry”, and that they were created with “Burnt the fire of thine eyes”. This goes to say that you can see all of the hatred and the fear that tigers betray, by only looking through their eyes. Tigers in mankind would be known as a bully or a dictator in our terms. This relates to the article “Dominant or Submissive? Paradox of Power in Sexual Relations” which goes on to talk about relating humans to how female dogs will sometime mount other female dogs, only so they can show dominance. This goes to prove that aggressive animals (a dog in this case) like to be the leader. But on the other hand, those that classify as tigers are also classified as leaders; leaders know how and when to get the things that they want. Which also comes along with abusing lambs sometimes in the process. This polarizing of people into the opposite of what they want doesn’t always seem like a good fit. The thing you have to ask yourself, is if you have to fall under one category or