The Tyger

Even though the poem is describing an animal of the natural world whose natural habitat is the jungle—the opposite of the bustling city of London—the speaker uses language associated with industry to describe the process of the tiger’s creation. Even though the speaker acknowledges that the creator is an artist: “And what shoulder, & what art” (Line 9), instead of using words like paintbrush, canvas, or even sculpture, the speaker opts for the language of industry: “What the hammer? what the chain, / In what furnace was thy brain? / What the anvil? what dread grasp” (Lines 13-15). The speaker is aligning the evil of the tiger with the evil of the sprawl of technology during the Industrial Revolution. It might not be the kind of evil with malicious intent, yet it causes violence and destruction nonetheless. In addition, the speaker’s difficulty in accepting the tiger as a thing of God’s creation influenced the choice to view God as a modern factory worker, forging something terrible and powerful. The speaker resists believing that the tiger could possibly be created in the peaceful haven that is nature; instead, the speaker suggests that something as terrifying as a tiger could only be manmade.