The Tyger

William Blake · Published 1794 · Songs of Experience · One of the sixteen compulsory anthology poems on Pearson Edexcel International GCSE English Literature (4ET1)

Question after question hammered at a creator who could make something this beautiful and this lethal.

Two ways to study it

• Grade 9 Notes — condensed and exam-focused: 1 full character studies, 4 themes, quotation analysis, thesis statements and essay plans.
• The Complete Guide to The Tyger — the long version: 12 chapters from the world behind the text to the examination.

The characters covered

• The Speaker — A voice that can only ask — awe and accusation fused into interrogation

The themes covered

• Creation and the creator — The poem's entire action is the attempt — and failure — to imagine the being who could make a tiger.
• Fear fused with awe — Terror and admiration are not alternatives in this poem — they are one emotion with two faces.
• Innocence and Experience — The Tyger is one half of a designed pair: the question a child answers happily in Innocence returns unanswerable in Experience.
• Power — divine, natural and human — A poem about an apex predator that locates all real power off-stage, in the hands that made it.