William Blake's Poem The Tyger

1] What does the Tyger symbolize?

2] ‘the forests of the night’ are both external and internal. How?

3] What accounts for the timelessness of Blake’s ‘The Tyger’?

4] In ‘fearful symmetry’, what is the quality evident in the balance?

5] If ‘On what wings dare he aspire?’ suggests Icarus in Greek mythology (who fell into the sea as he flew from Crete), what does ‘aspiration’ refer to?

6] Identify the two compelling feelings in -  ‘And when thy heart began to beat,/What dread hand? And what dread feet?’

7] What is the poet’s state of mind in ‘Did he who made the Lamb make thee’?

8] What is the mood sustained by the repetition of the anaphoric ‘What’?

9] What is the tone in the central metaphor of the creator as a blacksmith?

10] What is suggested by ‘Could’ in the first stanza and ‘Dare’ in the last stanza? How does this transition of verb affect the poet?

11] In ‘When the stars threw down their spears’, if ‘the stars’ allude to the good angels, what could be the two suggestions?

12] What is the impact of each quatrain with the rhyme scheme aa,bb ?

13] What does the abundance of deep, driving questions in ‘The Tyger’ add to?

14] Will you call Blake’s idea of good and evil essentially mystical? Justify with a reason.

15] How significantly does Blake’s question about trying to ‘frame’ the tiger’s ‘fearful symmetry’ relate to the role of a poet vis-a-vis imagination?

16] To what extent are the Lamb and the Tyger complementary as innocence symbol and energy symbol? 

17] The language of the poem is simple but Blake’s ideas are complex. What defines this paradox?

18] What is the impact of the personification in ‘When the stars… watered heaven with their tears’?

19] Is the reference to ‘fire’ in ‘Burnt the fire of thine eyes?’ an allusion?

20] How is the reality of ‘fearful symmetry’  Blake’s comment on Man-God ability?