Discussion Questions for The Lamb and The Tyger and other Blake poems

**Answer questions on your own paper and attach to this handout.

The Lamb and The Tyger

1.) Compare and contrast the speaker of each poem (Remember that they are the same
person, one in a state of innocence, the other in a state of experience).

2.) What is the effect of the rhetorical questioning in each poem?

3.) How do these poems reflect the theme of the awe and mystery of creation and the
creator?

4.) How do these poems reflect the Romantic concern with the nature of good and evil?

Infant Sorrow and Infant Joy

5.) Describe the key differences in the poems.

6.) Discuss the parents response to the child? Are they similar or different?

The Chimney Sweeper poems (the first is from the song of innocence, the second the song
of experience)

7.) In "The Chimney Sweeper" (Innocence), how does Blake evoke sympathy for the little
chimney sweeper at the beginning of the poem?

8.) How does he increase your sympathy, both for the speaker and for Tom Dacre, in the
second stanza?

9.) Why does Blake choose to end the third stanza with a reference to coffins? Why not
include the Angel with the key in that stanza?

10.) How are the coffins symbolic in the poem?

11.) How does the ending of the poem evoke even more sympathy for the chimney sweeps?

12.) What point(s) is Blake trying to make in this poem?

13.) How does Blake use color in "The Chimney Sweeper" (Experience) as opposed to the
Song of Innocence?

14.) The child in the Innocence version of the poem cries "'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" too; is that
line used the same way in both poems?

15.) What is the tone of the last stanza of the poem?

16.) In general, what is Blake's attitude toward organized religion, as it is revealed in these
poems?

17.) Which speaker understands his victimization? (remember, the speaker is the same
person).