The Lion and the Lamb essays

The Lion and the Lamb essays Life is full of opposites. For every black there is a white, for every day there is a night. The poetry of Blake is no exception. His poem The Lamb is the opposite of The Tyger. That is, the tyger is the predator, and the lamb the prey of the tyger. The Tyger conjures an image of being powerful, dark, and dangerous while The Lamb brings an image of reassuring peace. Blake uses these opposites to convey his feelings about various world events. At the time The Tyger was written, the Industrial Revolution was under way and Blake was upset by all the social injustice in the world. This explains why there are so many allusions in The Tyger and The Lamb to the Industrial and French Revolutions. Blake used these allusions because he wanted something the readers of his time could relate to and to show how he himself felt about these Revolutions as well. Blakes dislike of the Revolution leaked out blatantly into his poems. What the hammer? What the chain...dare its deadly terrors clasp? This mention of tools and chains alludes to the Industrial Revolution. The factories were the masters, and the people were its slaves, chained and unable to enjoy life. The dark tone of the poem gives an image of the dull and depressing, less than satisfactory conditions of the factories and the harsh lives of those who worked in them. Aside from only the Industrial Revolution, The Tyger draws a link to French Revolution, as the revolutionaries where also known as Tygers. The lamb on the other hand portrays a happier illustration. By the stream er the mead. The image of a field with sheep and a stream appears in dreams and as a sign of hope; for in the days of the industrial revolution, fields and open space were disappearing. In its place, dull and lifeless factories were bein ...