Characters and speaker

The poem “The Tyger” by William Blake is written as an inquiry. The speaker questions the act of creation, the antagonism between good and evil and the tiger’s perfection.

In “The Tyger”, we can identify three characters - the speaker, the creator and the tiger. The divine creator is implied through words like “immortal hand or eye” (l. 3) and the personal pronoun “he” (l. 19).

The Speaker

The speaker, or the narrator, is the one who addresses the questions in the poem. Lyrical voices are normally associated with alter-egos of poets. This lyrical voice is amazed by the perfection of the tiger:

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;” (ll. 1-2)

“In what distant deeps or skies,
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?” (ll. 5-6)

He is curious about how the tiger came into existence, who created hi...