Blake showed us a depressing, suffering,
and cold world in Songs of Experience. Teenagers were stuck in the school; “hapless
soldier’s sigh”; “youthful harlot’s curse”; people’s mind and desire were
imprisoned by the traditional concept and religion. He gave us a dark, ugly and
evil “experience” world. It just so different compared to Songs of Innocence. I
was shocked by the feelings that Songs of Experience express to me. In “The
Sick Rose” and “the Tiger”, Blake showed his remarkable skills to describe things
by metaphors and analogies. He did not directly tell us how this world looks
like, but used those metaphors and analogies to provide a vivid picture to make
us feel this world.
In “The Sick Rose”, Blake described an
invisible worm tired to find a sick rose in a howling storm night in the first
section. It made me think about what will happen. In the second section, the
worm find the rose actually, and “his dark secret love destroyed rose’s life.”
The first thought I come up with is a young man take away the girl’s chastity.
The illustration about this poem also proved my thought since girls become the
rose’s leaves, and the worm eat the leaves up left in the picture. It looks
like the rose already dying; represent those girls are lost them themselves in
the dark secret love. The selfish and evil “worm” destroyed the pure “rose”. It
is interesting I come up with a second thought after I read the poem on the
illustration. Why does the “worm” look like full of energy? He tried so hard to
go up. In the opposite, the rose droop her head on the ground, looks like
decadent and lost. The girl in the middle of the rose tried to hug something.
Even if the “worm” represents some bad evil things, does the rose one hundred
percent pure? I doubt that. It made me think about an old principle in China,
there is no simply black or white in the real world, most of things are gray.
It reminds me that evil and foul exists in everyone’s soul, the appearance of beautiful
do not decide the inside good and evil. I have to say combine the poem and
illustration actually give me much more thoughts compare to read poem only. The
way Blake used to express his mind provided us more choices to understand his
poem.
In “The Tiger”, Blake used his words to describe
a powerful king of the beasts. The whole poem repeated using fire to describe the
tiger. When I read this poem, the hot feeling occupied my mind. What is a
tiger? Just an animal? I have to say most of time tiger symbolizes power. After
I read the poem I keep thinking why Blake gave us a vivid picture of a tiger.
The whole Songs of Experience tried
to describe a cold, cruel and depressing world; a tiger seems like do not
belong to this world. I keep thinking about the tiger and I come up with a roughly
idea --- this tiger means revolution. The fire and the tiger made me felt the
violence and the heat only revolution can bring to this world. If we suppose
the illustration is a small world, we can see the tiger burned the whole world
(the whole poem is on fire in the illustration). After the revolution the sky
is still blue, but the cost of revolution damaged the whole society. The second
guess is that the tiger is a monarch or a hierarchy. In the illustration, there
is only a tiger in the picture without any other creatures. It represents some
kind of king’s situation --- there is only sky above his head, and ground under
his feet, except these two things, everyone is his subject. Those two
thoughts also come up with the understanding of the combination of poem and
illustration.
In the Songs
of Innocence and Experience, Blake used the metaphor and analogy to express
infinite thoughts in finite poems. The illustrations also give us more choices
to consider his poems. “The Sick Rose” and “The Tiger” are two good examples to
show how he expressed his idea in the poem and illustration. When we come up
with one thought and the illustration will remind us other possible ideas. It
helped me to think deeply and widely. The metaphor and analogy both in poems
and illustrations lead us into Blake’s “innocence and experience world”.
Your first paragraph is generic, with nothing resembling an argument.
ReplyDeleteAfter that, I'm going to move back and forth a little bit. First, let's talk about your English mechanics. I'd like to see you focus a little more on correctness, and a little less on complexity. Don't worry about trying to use semicolons, for instance - focus on making sure that every sentence has a correct verb. For instance, "The fire and the tiger made me felt the violence and the heat only revolution can bring to this world. " The sentence is present tense, and needs "feels", rather than felt. Getting the verbs right would be a great thing to focus on.
You have the beginning of an interesting argument in the Tiger section. The Sick Rose section might have potential too, but it's much harder to follow (which might be partially a result of mechanical issues). It reads like two separate arguments about two separate poems, rather than a coherent argument bringing the two together. You want to focus! Arguing that the tiger signifies revolution isn't simple or easy, but it sure is interesting. Could this argument have been extended, and directly connected to the Sick Rose? Or maybe your second poem should have been something other than the Sick Rose. In any case, you want to *one* argument, which everything in the essay contributes to.
Although your first paragraph doesn't show the argument you are trying tp portray, it could be used for a longer paper (with some editing to make more specific on what your argument is) because it is a productive thing to note in the differences between Blake's innocence and experience.
ReplyDeleteI think the questions you are asking when you talk about "The Rose" are good, and are the beginnings of a paper. Your thoughts need to be more thought out. In addition, "Tiger" is more thought out but I think what could make this entry better is trying to answer the question, "Why does Blake do this?"