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Religion in the Poetry of William Blake


The lamb is clothed in divine "delight" and its "woolly" coat renders a sense of sacrifice which reminds us of Christ's sacrifice. It is a delicacy of God's innocence and it sings as if to the rhythm of God. .
             "The Lamb" presents creation in a simplistic light of all things being made by God, where as "The Tyger" seeks to understand the motivation behind creation", says K. Wisniewski. Blake's dreary and contemptuous view of religion is reflected throughout Songs of Experience, as the adults shatter the visions of those childhood memories. The dream-like ideals are crushed by a harsher reality and the survivors are left with the scars. He brings up the question of evil's existence, to quote "The Tyger," from Songs of Experience: "Did he who make the lamb make thee"". In this example, the main theme of religion is the question of how the sweet and gentle God of Innocence, created or allowed the creation of the miseries that abound in Experience. According to A. Powell, "The author notes that the perfect, beautiful, symmetrical, work of art (the tyger) is such a destructive animal: here Blake is identifying the idea that there, in fact, is evil in such a beautiful world but he cannot understand why". This idea reiterates Blake's anxieties about the current deteriorating condition of London. In Blake's day, religious individuals and their institutions held great sway over people and questioning God's absolute supremacy was pretty rare. Blake, however, does not confine himself to what the conventional notion of religion taught. He interacts with the Christian religion by challenging its assumptions. When Blake questions who "could" create the Tyger, he casts aside the notion that the Christian God is omnipotent. The poem raises an innovative question that if God is responsible for creating both the good things in life (the lamb) and the evil things (the tyger), how can God be good and moral? .


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