William Blake, now considered one of the most illustrious Romantic poets, was given nearly no recognition during his lifetime for the enlightened works he published. He ventured away from the ordinary model of understanding that was deemed familiar to the everyday person, which was extremely uncommon and even considered too “radical” for the time. This theme was ever present in his literature, perhaps most plainly observed in his renowned collections of poems titled Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. These anthologies illustrate how the unpleasantries of life bring about the maturation from childhood to adulthood, and greatly affect people’s outlook on society. As an emerging author, Blake wrote Songs of Innocence to argue that by …show more content…
Two of Blake’s poems that exemplify this complete transformation of perspective are “The Lamb,” part of the Innocence section, and “The Tyger,” from the Experience portion. While it is common to believe that the lamb and the tiger represent good and evil, respectively, they present more profound material. The animals can also be interpreted as symbols that allude to innocence and experience, which is accomplished through the use of spiritual undertones. William Blake’s poems, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger,” are antitheses that employ religious symbols to support the opposing ideas of innocence and purity versus experience and sinfulness that the two creatures present, …show more content…
God created the tiger to be everything the lamb is not, emphasizing the “symbiosis between good and evil” (Bloom 2). While the lamb represents all the good aspects of religion, like Jesus Christ and Heaven, the tiger represents all the wicked facets, such as Lucifer and Hell. It was necessary for God to create the tiger because there needed to be a balance between the good that the lamb depicts and the evil of the tiger (Paley 2). The animals complement each other in the most elementary way, and they provide outlooks on religion and the world that are both inscrutable and good. The animals also offer divergent perspectives on society, mainly innocence and experience. In fact, it has been said that “the juxtaposition of lamb and tiger points not merely to the opposition of innocence and experience, but to the resolution of the paradox they present” (Paley 2). Innocence is converted into experience, just as the lamb is converted into the tiger, because the “transformation from the gentle lamb into the powerful tiger is an integral part of maturation” (Bloom 2). This explains why “The Lamb” is part of Blake’s Songs of Innocence volume, and “The Tyger” is part of Songs of