Today our discussion of Blake continued. As usual, my analysis did not agree with my teacher. I love William Blake but see him completely different from my teacher who also loves William Blake. It makes for interesting and diverse discussions. BUT today I was very intrigued by something. You see, we studied Blake last year with Mr. Hough but for some reasons never studied his illustrations which are a key part of his poetry. Today in class we discussed “The Tyger” which I wrote an in class paper on last year. As Joanna talked about her interpretation and the illustration, a detail really caught my attention. Apparently a widespread discussion about this illustration is why Blake made the tiger so gentle looking. Blake could have made him look vicious but instead he is rather docile. Intense research and debate has taken place over this, yet according to Joanna, no one seems to know (or at least no one that holds her interpretation of the poem). The illustration coordinated perfectly with Mr. Hough’s interpretation! It brought whole new life to the poem for me. I’m not going to explain the full analysis of the poem in this post but in short, Mr. Hough said that the tiger represented evil which was created by Satan. Satan was the “immortal hand.” I could go more into it but that’s the shortest description I can give. I LOVE how that correlates with the illustration because the tiger IS docile. We think of a tiger as so vicious when it’s all a mask. Likewise, we fear Satan and his weapon of evil when in the end, it is so docile in comparison to the strength of God. The battle is already won! “The enemy has been defeated. Death couldn’t hold You down. We lift our voice in victory. We’re gonna make our praises loud!” What a comforting thought. No weapon can be formed against us… Food for thought… Hope you enjoy!
