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The Tiger

The tiger addressed by the speaker isn’t just a tiger; it’s also a symbol of ferocity and violence. As the relentless questioning reveals, the speaker’s main interest in the poem isn’t the tiger itself. Rather, the focus is on what the tiger represents, and for the speaker, this creature’s key feature is its “fearful symmetry” (lines 4 and 24). Beginning with this observation about the tiger’s fearsomeness, the speaker infers a creator who would be capable of bringing such a terrifying animal into being. Of course, the implication here goes far beyond the tiger. If there is a creator, and if this creator is capable of fashioning such a ferocious being, then, by extension, this same creator must be capable of other awe-inspiring things. In a way, then, the speaker’s line of inquiry about the tiger may be read as a version of a very common theological question—namely, why would God allow evil to exist? The tiger is therefore a symbol for all that is scary and unknowable.

The Lamb

Though the speaker spends most of the poem asking questions about the tiger and the tiger’s creator, the speaker also mentions a third figure: the Lamb. The placement of this reference to the Lamb is important, coming as it does in the final line of the fifth stanza. At this point in the poem, the speaker has interrogated the tiger at length about how and why its maker could fashion such “fearful symmetry.” In the fifth stanza, the speaker’s perspective widens out briefly before concluding with a nearly identical version of the opening stanza. At this climactic point, the speaker asks how the tiger’s creator felt about his creation once he’d finished making it (lines 17–20):

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

After asking generally if the creator “smile[d] his work to see,” the speaker asks specifically if the same creator who made the tiger could have also made the Lamb. If the tiger represents fearsomeness and the possibility of evil, then the Lamb represents the opposite: gentleness and the possibility of good. It’s also worth noting that for Christians, Jesus Christ is often referred to as the Lamb of God, which brings another level of symbolism to the speaker’s invocation of the Lamb.

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