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Directions: Write an essay of 5 pages containing the following elements:

--Introductory paragraph (or two)

--Thesis statement

--Supporting paragraphs (as many as it takes; preferably 4-6) with topic sentences and supporting evidence based on your chosen stories, quoting using the MLA format (see Perrine’s Writing About Literature section, pp. 1-56).

--Concluding paragraph restating the thesis and adding some profound, thoughtful final idea.


Prompts for this assignment.

Describe and account for the differences in tone between Blake's "The Lamb" and "The Tiger"

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Analysis of William Blake’s “The Lamb” and “The Tiger.” “The Lamb” was first published in Songs of Innocence (1789) and “The Tiger” in Songs of Experience (1794). Blake described these two volumes as “Showing Contrary States of the Human Soul.” Though the poems in Songs of Experience are generally darker in tone than those in the earlier book, Blake is not necessarily suggesting that innocence is better than experience. Rather, each state shows the incompleteness or the inadequacy of the other. In the “Introduction” to Songs of Innocence (page 851), Blake was bid by his muse to “Pipe a song about a Lamb.” This is it. The central question asked in this poem is “Little Lamb, who made thee?” The central question asked in “The Tiger” is “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” “The Tiger” was obviously written to complement “The Lamb.” Together the two poems make a poetic diptych. In “The Lamb” the speaker is a child, and the chief effect of the poem is a childlike simplicity, produced by the use of a simple vocabulary—mostly monosyllabic, end-stopped lines—one statement to a line, a songlike meter (six four-beat lines in each stanza, framed at beginning and end by a pair of three-beat lines), paired rhymes, and frequent repetitions. The situation and content of the poem also express this childlike simplicity. The child talks to a lamb, asks it a question and answers the question himself, and in his answer shows his trustful, unquestioning acceptance of the Christian story he has been taught. The lamb was created by Christ, who in the New Testament is called “the Lamb of God,” and who through his incarnation became “a little child.” The child and the lamb are thus one with Christ in name as well as in gentleness and love and the poem appropriately ends, “Little Lamb, God bless thee.” In “The Tiger” the speaker is an adult, possibly the poet; he does not literally speak to the tiger, he apostrophizes it; and the central question of the poem is left unanswered. The image in the first two lines is one of the most vivid in English poetry. Primarily we are meant to see two eyes glaring in the dark (see line 6); but if we think of the orange and black stripes of the tiger’s body, we also have a flamelike image. The tiger is associated with images of fire throughout the poem. He is imagined to have been made in a cosmic smithy (“forged,” “hammer,” “chain,” “furnace,” “anvil”), and his creator is personified as a powerful smith. But is this smithy in “distant deeps or skies”—in hell or heaven? And was the smith Satan or God? And, having created the tiger, did the smith “smile” to see what he had made? These are the questions urged on the reader insistently, like the blows of a hammer on an anvil (the interrogative “what” is used thirteen times during the poem), and in a meter whose accents fall also with the force and regularity of hammer blows. The tiger is described as awesome—that is, as arousing both fear and admiration in the beholder. Its “fearful symmetry,” the burning brightness of its eyes, its twisted sinewy heart, the “deadly terrors” of its brain—these qualities suggest beauty, strength, fierceness, and violence. But if the tiger is awesome, its creator is even more so. He is “immortal” (3, 23), daring (7, 8, 24), winged (7), strong (9-10), “dread” (12, 15), and an artist (9). The difficult lines 17-18 have been explained in many ways—in terms of astrology, as metaphor for dawn and dewfall, as symbolic of love and pity, as an allusion to the war in heaven between the good and the rebel angels depicted in Milton’s Paradise Lost, as an allusion to symbols in Blake’s private mythology, as an image for showers of sparks sent out from the cosmic forge and of the water used to temper the glowing metal, and so on. Perhaps, in their broadest and simplest sense, they can be taken to suggest, “When even the stars wept, did the creator of the tiger smile?” No answer to its central question is stated in the poem. Is one implied? There is no consensus. About half of the critics say that the question is rhetorical, intended by Blake to be answered “Yes.” The creator of the Lamb was also the creator of the Tiger, and He looked on his work and found it “good”. The power of the poem is the power with which it expresses this mysterious paradox in the nature of God, creator of both the rainbow and the whirlwind. But the other half say that the question is unanswerable, and was not intended by Blake to be answered one way or the other—that Blake’s poem is about the mystery and ambiguity of the universe, which is ultimately beyond man’s understanding. The lamb and the tiger symbolize god and evil, God’s love and God’s wrath, gentle meekness and powerful energy, innocent purity and strong sexuality, peace and war, mercy and justice, pardon and punishment.
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Explanation & Answer

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Surname 1
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The Tome in “The Lamb” and “The Tiger”
William Blake’s “The Lamb” and “The Tiger” are two great works of literature that are
used today to study the Romantic Movement and spirituality. The two poems, although they are
complementary, present glaring differences in the tone and the language patterns employed.
Understanding the differences in tone and the imagery used needs for one to understand the
foundation of the poems before going ahead to analyze the tones. The background information
on the poems can be based mostly on the author and the background of the works he presented
alongside the two poems. First, William Blake was a British poet who lived from 1757 to 1827.
This period marked the beginning of the Romantic Movement which was mostly characterized
by the expression of human spiritualism and its connection to nature. Therefore, the placing of
the author at that period in history partly explains the themes of the poems.
The two poems are both based on spiritualism and creation in particular. Several themes
emerge in the poem but one of the most dominant is the theme of creation and contrast in the
creatures of the world. Also, this difference is seen in the volumes of books that the poems were
published in. “The Lamb” was published in the Songs of Innocence (1789) while “The Tiger”
was published later in 1794 in the Songs of Experience. These two volumes draw a clear line of
difference in the poems in that in the first poem; it is expected that the writer wrote from the
point of innocence while the second displays experience. Therefore, while viewing the tone, one
has to view the poems from the intentions of the author as a better way of understanding them.

Surname 2
William Blake’s “The Lamb” shows simplicity in the sentence structure and the tone used is that
of innocence and naivety while “The Tiger” adopts a complicated sentence structure and portrays
maturity in the exploration of nature.
The tones of the two poems are first noted in the opening lines of the two poems thus
sending a message from the start. The first poem shows the tone of innocence and naivety in the
way the child addresses the lamb. The first sentence is “Little lamb, Who make thee” (Blake 120
Line 1). The approach here already shows pity, humility, and meekness in the lamb which is
addressed by the speaker. Therefore, the author aims to show from the word go that the lamb is
harmless and adorable. On the other hand, the second poem starts with strong regard for the
appearance of the tiger. Blake starts his poem with the line “Tiger, tiger, burning bright” (Blake
130 Line 1). A one on one comparison of the opening lines of both poems shows that while in
the first one the author admires the innocence and meekness of the lamb, the tiger is admired and
feared at the same time because it burns bright. Therefore, the tone of danger and strength is set
in the second poem. It is, therefore, evident that the opening lines of both poems are set to send
the message early enough for the reader to understand the difference between the two creatures.
In “The Lamb,” the author adopts simplicity in the way the speaker speaks while “The
Tiger” shows sophistication in the use of the rhetorical question as a device to show maturity in
the speaker. In the former, the speaker, who is later revealed to be a child, is speaking to the
lamb and asking it whether it knows who made it: “Little lamb, who made thee, Dost thou know
who made thee " (Blake 120 Lines 1-2). The simplicity of the language shows that it is indeed a
child who speaks because it shows naivety. Further, the structure uses repetition in the first and
second couplets of each stanza. This device makes the poem have a child song rhythmic pattern.

Surname 3
On the other hand, the tone of “The Tiger” and the choice of words show maturity and
thus enhance the message being passed. The rhetorical question device is especially seen as
bringing out the maturity. For instance, the author writes: “What immortal hand or eye could
frame thy fearful symmetry” (Blake 129 Lines 3-4). The tone here ...


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