blake

Grendel-John Gardner

The Tyger- William Blake

Little Lamb- William Blake

Throughout Grendel, a constant struggle is seen in our beloved main character.  First introduced to the life-changing ideas of the Shaper, Grendel is then ‘enlightened’ by the words of the dragon. These seemingly opposite ideas both tug at his mind, tempting him toward them and pulling his mind apart at the same time…which is completely the world of Blake.

For Blake, nothing was certain; everything was made into a dichotomy of two seemingly reconcilable ideas. “Little Lamb” and the “The Tyger” represent this world of halves quite well, the former representing the lack of knowledge of the Songs of Innocence while the latter provides a more aware and knowledgeable view of the word. But lack knowledge and knowledgeable once again bring up the world of opposites the Grendel lives in. How can there be a lack of knowledge while being knowledgeable? But that is exactly the concept that Blake begin to illustrate in these two poems.

They both discuss a greater “creator,” uniting them into a common world of one subject, but in that uniting they bring those two very different experience levels into one world. Even within the poem “Little Lamb” this dichotomy is seen as the speaker tells the Little Lamb, curious about who his creator is, “I’ll tell thee.” In that phrase alone, the conveying of knowledge is implied, even though the innocence that the lamb represents shouldn’t be involved with the gaining of knowledge. Nonetheless, Blake brings the two worlds together in this impossible coexistence.

The same is seen in “The Tyger” as the speaker describes the acts of the creator of the Tyger. The Tyger is constantly associated with the world of ‘experience’ through phrases such as “fire of thine eyes.” Fire in itself can be seen to represent knowledge as it was the ‘knowledge’ that Prometheus brought down to the humans. At the same time, it has the destructive, corrupted quality that often is seen in the world of experience. Later on in the poem, a connection is also made between the two poems, once again a seemingly impossible bridge. “Did he smile his work to see,” the speaker muses, “Did he who made the lamb make thee!” Through this phrase, the topic of creator that dominated both poems envelopes both the world of innocence and experience. The creator that molded the innocence of the lamb was also able to use the same hands, now a “dread hand,” in order to shape the terrorizing form of experience in the Tyger. Not only was this unlikely relationship made real within the creator of the two animals, but even in the creation of these opposites, on his face lays a “smile,” suggesting he knew very well what it was that he was doing. It was not an accidental uniting, but rather an intentional one, possessing all of the previous planning that is embodied in the “symmetry” and thought put into the creation of the Tyger.

Then, since the ideas fit so well, it seems a given that Grendel is littered with references to Blake’s work. Just as the world of “The Tyger” and the “Little Lamb” are torn apart and reconciled under the very concept that separates them, Grendel’s mind undergoes united division. During his battle with Beowulf, this mental state is reflected physically as Grendel is literally “torn” apart by Beowulf. Yet in that instance, Grendel seems to find clarity and understanding of the world as he says his “sight clears.” Just as Blake described, Grendel found unity in the division.