The Tyger And Religion

Throughout the ages, there has been a philosophical debate over religion and who created the world. This debate aims to answer the question: Did the universe and all its inhabitants come to be by a big bang or rather intelligent design? In the 18th century, an English poet approached the topic asking a series of questions about the creator of tygers and lambs. William Blake’s “The Tyger” challenges the idea of the intents of an intelligent creator creating both good and evil. In the poem, there are many questions about who the creator of the world is and such a creator’s qualities. In the first stanza, the theory of intelligent design is immediately address by the lines, “What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (Blake

A key point to elaborate on is what represents good and evil in the poem. In the first and last stanza of the poem, these lines are repeated, “What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (Blake 1244). With the exception of “could” being “dare” in the last stanza, these lines “could suggest that the tiger is to be feared because ‘fearful’ is an adjective attached to the tiger’s symmetry” (Keaton 97). While fear does not necessarily suggest evil, fear can suggest caution and evil can be illustrated by the line, “Burnt the fire of thine eyes?” (Blake 1244). The fire of thine eyes could represent an evil that lies within them since eyes are speculated to be the window into one’s soul. Describing the glint of fire in the eyes of the tyger, leads one to speculate that the tyger could symbolizes a great evil along with the help of these lines, “And when thy heart began to beat, / What dread hand? & what dread feet?” (Blake 1244). As a result of these lines, the tyger has manifested a fearful stature that influences the mind to believe that it could potentially cause great harm. The dreaded hands and feet of the creature can cause one to start to think that the tyger symbolizes the devil provided these lines as well, “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright” and “When the stars threw down their spears / And water’d heaven with their tears” (Blake 1244). The tyger

The entire poem consists of six stanzas all consisting of rhyming couplets. Due to these couplets, the fearful symmetry of the tyger is represented by the symmetry of the lines in the poem. In addition to the symmetry of the lines, “the final stanza seems merely to repeat the first, thus contributing to the ‘symmetry’ of the work itself” (Evans). Symmetry is an important aspect in this poem, because it provides structure to the otherwise unanswerable questions. Within the poem, there are 15 question marks in total. The constant questions cause anyone who reads the poem to begin to feel existentialism as they begin to question if there really is an intelligent designer and if that creator is good or evil. Along with the questions, one of the rhymes creates an eerie feeling as it is an inexact rhyme. These two lines are “What immortal hand or eye, / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” (Blake 1244). Eye and symmetry do not actually rhyme and break the structure created by the other couplets in the beginning and the end of the poem. The discomfort caused by these lines only contribute to the feelings of existentialism and uncertainty leaving one to rely solely on the structure of the