Like horoscopes, Chinese zodiacs also have twelve signs, each
represented by an animal. A few years ago when it entered the year of Tiger, I
saw my dad’s email for his former literature students saying “Tyger Tyger, burning
bright. Happy New Year!” and I thought: you are the dean of the faculty of arts
and you misspelled tiger?
Little did I know that William Blake’s “The Tyger” is such a
renowned piece of literary work. It has six rhyming quatrains, consisting
unanswered questions only. Right at the first stanza, the tiger’s “immortal
hand or eye” (4) and its “fearful symmetry” (4) shows that the tiger is a
symbol of power and evilness. Blake suggests that all creation must in some way
reflect the nature of its creator. The reference to the lamb – “Did he who made
the Lamb make thee?” (20) – reminds the readers that both the tiger and the
lamb were created by the same God. The open awe of “The Tyger” contrasts with
the easy confidence, in “The Lamb,” of a child’s innocent faith in a kind and
loving world. Blake leaves us readers to figure out by ourselves that that if
even God has both good and evil in Him, then isn’t it just obviously true that
there is an undeniable existence of evilness in all of human, and people just
need to accept this?
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