In Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blake uses a range of colors and illustrations to
supplement his poetry in a manner which directly aids the meaning and depth of
the works he presents. Blake explores
the innocence of childhood and the inevitable the loss of innocence through
various methods of presentation in his poetry.
He also explores the human condition in different manners through an
ideal condition and through the actual nature of man manifested in humanity’s
current condition of political struggle and strife. Examples of these themes can be seen in the
coupling of two poems, seen in the case of “The Lamb” found in Songs of Innocence and “The Tyger” found
in Songs of Experience, or creating
two images for one poem and using distinctly different imagery and colors in
each, such as “The Ecchoing Green”, to help express a duality between the
natures of the innocent (young) and the experienced (old).
In the two image (6-7) poem, “The
Ecchoing Green”, the use of color and children’s reactions from image 6 to
image 7 helps convey a certain critique about life between young and old. The
children in their present status are incapable of seeing the world through the
perspective of an adult, but rather have this creative freedom and maintain a state
of purity.
The beginning of poem
captures this essence of youth by describing an ideal summer day in which
cheerful sounds and games indicate the careless free-spirited nature of kids. Being watched over by the elders, they
reminisce about their own sports and games on the ecchoing green but the
advancement of night brings the constant reminder that their number of days
dedicated to youthful expression are limited.
As you follow the outstretched arm of the elder directing the children,
you can see the background hues shift from light blue and lilac, to a dark
encroaching black. The children are all facing this dark
Many
of the poems found within The Songs of
Innocence appeared to have an opposite partner poem found in The Songs of Experience. “The
Lamb” and “The Tyger” appear to be just one set of these inverse poems,
holding distinctly different meanings on man, using the symbol of the lamb as a
religious expression and the tiger as one of industry and development. In “The Lamb” a shepherd tends to his lambs under
intertwined vines, which does well to frame the shot by having two distinctly
different colored skies on either side of the vine. The vines are seen to protect the shepherd
from the dark blue and violet portion of the sky. The portion of surrounding
the shepherd is a much lighter blue as if the shepherd is under God’s good
graces, while he recites his pastoral expression to the lambs about their
creation under his divine oversight. The colors of the lambs themselves are a
simple cream color with little detail to separate them out from each
other.
Conversely, in “The
Tyger” the image of the tiger is rich with unique detail and surrounded with a
radiant crimson hue, to accompany the poems repetitive dialogue of,
“Tyger Tyger, burning
bright,
In the forests of the night”.
Even under the darkness of night, the tiger burns
bright like the glow of a furnace which accompanies the hammer, chain and anvil. The tiger represents the industrious and
primal nature of man and the real world, and is used to make a contrasting
statement against the lamb. The texts, when looked at together, ask the
question if it was the same hand which created the innocence lamb and the
primal tiger. “The Tyger” asks: "Did he who
made the Lamb make thee?”, and the text seems to agree that it was the same
hand capable of creating such contrasting entities.
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ReplyDeleteThis essay presents some interesting ideas, but similar to the discussion in class it suffers from trying to do too much. I like the ideas presented, however I feel you should narrow your focus. Focus solely on the themes presented in the coupling of poems, or those themes present in the "Ecchoing Green." Develop these ideas and dig deeper. Rather than trying to explore multiple overarching concepts in the poems, explore that idea isolated to one or two specific poems.
ReplyDeleteAs Kyle says, there's too much going on here. You are working with both halves of the book instead of one, and you spend more time describing the poems than analyzing them. Finally, too much of what's here is an overly easy analysis of the way that "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" are paired.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't mean there's nothing worthwhile here. In fact, I thought your analysis of the role of color in all three poems was an excellent start. It's just that there's so little of it - most of your energy is expended on unnecessary material which doesn't really contribute to your argument. Your best moment, strangely, actually stops mid-sentence. The children are all facing the dark, yes. But why? What's your interpretation of that? Ideally, that might have been the lead-in to the next several paragraphs on the Echoing Green. Some of the material on the other two poems was fine - but you stopped with the Echoing Green just as it was getting good. In the future, focus more on developing yoru argument, and less on trying to cover a lot of ground.