1a. What questions are asked in stanza 1?
2a. What answer does the speaker give to the lamb?
3a. To whom does the speaker compare the lamb?
4a. How is this poem like a prayer? What elements give this impression?
5a. Evaluate the mood of the poem. What elements help to create that mood?
1b. What is the attitude of the speaker as he questions the lamb?
2b. In stanza 2, how does the speaker compare the lamb to the one who became a lamb?
3b. How does the speaker explain humanity's relationship to the lamb?
4b. What sort of speaker might offer this kind of prayer? What conclusions can you draw, then, about the speaker we hear in this poem? Why?
5b. What other animals might the poet have used to symbolize innocence? What characteristics and traditional associations make the lamb an appropriate symbol for innocence?
Pastoral Poem. Does "The Lamb" fit the definition of a pastoral poem? Explain.
Allegory. Explain whether "The Lamb" is an example of naive allegory or an extended metaphor.
1a. What characteristics of the tiger are described in stanzas 2 and 3?
2a. What process does the speaker describe in stanza 4?
3a. What question does the speaker ask in stanza 5?
4a. Analyze the descriptive words and phrases used to describe the tiger. Compare them to the descriptive words and phrases used in "The Lamb." Compare also the use of questions in each poem.
5a. What judgment on experience does Blake suggest? Is it a positive or a negative thing? Or is it some combination? What elements of the poem lead you to this conclusion? Do you agree or disagree with Blake?
1b. How does the speaker characterize the tiger through this physical description?
2b. To what process involving furnaces and anvils does the speaker compare the creation of the tiger?
3b. Why does the speaker wonder whether God was happy with the creation of the tiger?
4b. If the tiger symbolizes experience and the lamb symbolizes innocence, how does experience differ from innocence?
5b. How does this poem reflect a fear of the primitive? Why do "civilized people" have this fear?
Alliteration. List examples of alliteration in "The Tyger." Then review "The Lamb" and compare the uses of alliteration in the two poems.
Character. Compare the characters in "The Lamb" and "The Tyger." What characteristics make one character clearly a symbol of innocence and the other clearly a symbol of experience?
1a. In stanza 2, what does the speaker hear in every voice?
2a. What two people are mentioned in stanza 3? what two social institutions?
3a. What harm is done by the "curse" mentioned in stanza 4?
4a. Analyze the people who are wronged in this poem. What sort of people are they? Who or what seems to be the wrongdoer in the poem?
5a. What judgment is Blake making about urban life?
1b. In what ways are the people of the city "manacled"?
2b. What wrongs are referred to in stanza 3? What implied criticism is made of the two institutions mentioned in stanza 3?
3b. What double meaning can we draw from the word "curse" here? What is the significance of the "marriage hearse"?
4b. How does the poet seem to feel about the common people of London? What leads you to this conclusion? How is this consistent or not consistent with Romantic ideals?
5b. Given what you know about the Romantics from the introduction to this unit, what sort of life do you think Blake would prefer to live in urban London? Why?
Setting. Describe this poem's setting. Why is its setting particularly important?
Image. Review the sensory details chart you made in Literary Tools. What senses are employed? What sort of mood do these sensory details help to create?
1. Zoos post informational plaques by the cages of the animals on display to educate the observer about the animal, its habitat, and its means of eating and defending itself. Imagine that you are a zookeeper and have been assigned to write a brief informative paragraph to be used on such a plaque outside the cage of a lamb.
2. Write an allegorical poem about an animal, perhaps a pet or an animal you have seen in a zoo or in the wild. Using your imagination, ask yourself what that animal might symbolize for you. Then use descriptive detail that will appeal to your reader's senses of touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing to describe the animal and develop the symbolic association you have in mind.
3. Imagine yourself to be a nineteenth-century social reformer who has observed the conditions portrayed by Blake in "London." Write an expose (a formal statement of facts) to be published in the newspaper pointing out these conditions and offering a proposal for correcting them.
Prepositional Phrases. Rewrite and combine each of the pairs of sentences using prepositional phrases beginning with in, on, of, or by.
1. I hear the sad voices of people. The people are in pain.
2. I see weakness and pain. The weakness and pain show on people's faces.
3. People are imprisoned. Mind-forged manacles imprison them.
4. I hear a cry. It is an infant's cry.
5. The chimney-sweeper cries. His cries appall the church.
Researching London. Research the actual living conditions in London for the common person in the early nineteenth century. What was an average day like for a chimney sweep or a soldier? How realistic is Blake's setting and mood in "London"?
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