The Theme of Spirituality in ‘Holy Thursday: Songs of experience’ and ‘The Tyger’ Anonymous 12th Grade

William Blake’s poems ‘The Tyger’ and ‘Holy Thursday’ - each from his more dysphemistic book ‘Songs of Experience’ - explore and lament the loss of spirituality in the unethical era of the Industrial Revolution. He approaches the topics of man's relationship with God, questioning even the nature of God Himself differently in each poem and adopting the role of Devil's Advocate in the narrative of ‘The Tyger’ as many critics have perceived, yet still remaining passionate about nature and spirituality as an archetypal early Romantic.

Blake speculates upon God's creation of two parts: the Innocent and the Sadistic, leading him to question the motivation and nature of the ‘immortal’ creator. The poet communicates this dichotomy of the world most explicitly within ‘The Tyger’ by using the tiger as a symbol for immense power and dominance. First, Blake communicates his reverence and fear for the creator of such a beast using a rhetorical question in the first stanza asking what being ‘Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’. The noun ‘symmetry’, demonstrating the completeness and intimidating beauty, conveys respect for the tiger’s maker, while the alliterative ‘f’ sounds imitates rasping anger - thus, perhaps the narrator is displeased...