William Blake Research Paper

William Blake, the celebrated romantic poet, was not always celebrated for his work. In fact, it was not until over a century after his death that his creativity and pieces of literature were finally appreciated. It is believed that his work went underappreciated due to the fact that he was deemed as an extreme radical by his peers who presumed he was stuck reminiscing about the old values of rustic living prior to the Industrial Revolution. However, one critic concluded that his unpopularity may possibly be accredited to his complex vision of life that was too hard for his society to understand. William Blake saw life in opposites which were reflected in a majority of his work. Unlike any of his fellow romantics, Blake’s works revolved around

A mainly focused his works around the theme of opposites because he saw opposition as a way to create balance in the world. He attempted to create such balance through his two books of poems, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In those books, can be found what is deemed to be two of his most famous works of binary opposites: “The Tyger” and “The Lamb.” William Blake used his poems, “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”, as counterparts containing symbolism that complimented each other in order to express the binary opposite of innocence vs. experience in relation to man’s conception of God.

At first glance, William Blake’s “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” seem like two unrelated poems that are meant to describe the characteristics of their respective animal and question who the creator of each is. Blake intended for his poems to be companion poems that use a tiger and a lamb as symbols to express a deeper theme: “man’s conception of God” (Reinhart). Blake uses these poems and the theme of the conception of God as a way to revert back to the common binary opposite found in the majority of his works, innocence and experience. Man’s conception of God or in this case, the conception of the two animals depends on their

In order for Blake’s readers to grasp his complex theme of man’s conception of God, he used an array of literary devices in order to make the theme easier to understand and more relatable. Specifically, in “The Lamb”, Blake used imagery and soft language in order to emphasize the innocent nature that is intertwined into God’s power and wrath. The most evident piece of imagery used within the poem is the image of the lamb. In literature, a lamb is an archetypal symbol that represents youthfulness, peace, and purity. In the Bible, the Son of God is compared to a lamb who was sacrificed on behalf of humanity in order to eradicate the sins of the world. Blake used these representations to his advantage and centered the entire poem around the image of a meek lamb. He used the docile nature of the lamb to render one’s willingness to do what God commands of them without a second thought because of their innocent nature and juvenile relationship with God. Blake begins his poem with an apostrophe, asking “Little Lamb who made thee / Doust thou know who made thee” (Blake 1-2). This first line creates a distinct biblical allusion to the creation story in Genesis. By indirectly referencing the story of creation, Blake directly relates the little lamb in the poem to the “Lamb of God” in the creation