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"Life of Pi" Poetry Circles
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"Life of Pi" Poetry Circles
Critically Analyzing William Blake's "The Tyger"
The Questions:
Wonderful word search:
Find three words in the poem that you think are wonderful.
Feeler:
Describe your emotions; how the poem makes you feel.
Meaning Maker:
What does the poem mean to you?
Connections:
How do the themes, emotions, symbols, etc. of this poem connect to "Life of Pi"?
William Blake Poetry Circles
About "The Tyger"
It's a Symbolic Poem
"The Tyger" is a highly symbolic poem based on Blake’s personal philosophy of spiritual and intellectual revolution by individuals. The speaker in the poem is puzzled at the sight of a tiger in the night, and he asks it a series of questions about its fierce appearance and about the creator who made it.
The Forest
Your Task:
Your group will be given a poem to read by William Blake. Please work together to fill in the Poetry Literature Circle Worksheet together. As a group, we will come together and discuss the potential thematic, emotional, symbolic, etc., connections between the Blake poem and "Life of Pi."
The forest is the symbol of corrupted social conventions and that tries to suppress the good human potentials. In the poem night stands for ignorance, out of which the forest of false social institutions is made.
It's a Romantic Poem
It is also a romantic poem to some extent written by the pre-romantic William Blake. The ‘Tyger’ is a symbolic tiger which represents the fierce force in the human soul. It is created in the fire of imagination by the god who has a supreme imagination, spirituality and ideals. The anvil, chain, hammer, furnace and fire are parts of the imaginative artist’s powerful means of creation. The imaginative artist is synonymous with the creator. The man with a revolutionary spirit can use such powers to fight against the evils of experience.
Thematic Possibilities
Thematically, the poem is intended to make us to witness the persona realizing the potentials of his soul and to realize it ourselves. We have not only the lamb (Christ) like humility but also the tiger like quality for spiritual revolution and freedom from falsities. The unusual spelling in “Tyger” is also a hint of the special meaning and emphasis as the unusual stresses. The use of the first stanza as a refrain repeating it with the difference of one word (dare) at the end is also for special emphasis on its symbolism.