Adaptation Final

The Tiger
William Blake

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

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?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?





Of Tigers and Lambs
It was the third day and Simon, sweat-drenched and all of five feet high, still remained perched on a bough amongst the canopy of the swallowing jungle. About him were the hanging, creeping tentacles of green, spindly vine. They seemed to infect the trees en masse, sliding from one treetop to another, like the fear in Simon’s mind that infested his every thought and penetrated his every recess, his every mental shelter.

The Tiger was hunting him. It had been hunting him for three days.

His glistening skin reflected the moonlight so that he blended in with the sparkling jewels that winked atop the trees, those drew droplets scattered across the jungle canopy as the night continued to cool after the suffocating constriction of the daytime heat. Simon wondered at that mocking beauty, the radiant gems, amongst this horror of a jungle, this danger and darkness that surrounded him, that would not fade with the coming of the morning light.

His head was heavy and his thoughts a whirl. He groaned and startled himself out of an introspective daze which seemed to melt into reality without but a swirl to distinguish one from the other.

Oh those eyes! He could see them now, flashing in his mind, promising his capture, tormenting his resolve. He brought in his legs tighter, gripped them with his little hands with what remaining strength he had as he balanced, with surprising ease, on the wide bough twenty feet up. He clung to his legs, the physical mirror of his mental retraction, receding into himself, trying to find some crack or crevasse in that blanketing terror into which he could crawl into and hide.

The Tiger was after him. That orange, whiskered beast with her warm, sticky breath and patient clawed paws.

He groaned again, pressing his hands to his temples. There was a thump and a throb and a rising hiss in his ears that drowned out the sound of the nighttime jungle, feverishly alive with the grinding legs of myriad insects.

“No, no,” he whispered to himself. His dry tongue kept sticking to his lips. “No, she can’t climb up this high. She can’t.”

He rocked slightly, nodding. He was sure. The Tiger couldn’t climb up this high. He was safe as long as he stayed here.

“No, no –” he spluttered, his parched throat scratchy and itchy, three days deprived of liquid. He had been licking the dew off leaves at night.

That striped, camouflaged, invisible beast!

“Beast?”

Simon jerked upright, his heart racing furiously, his eyes darting left, right, then up and down.

“Wh- who said that?” He looked down, seeking the base of the trunk that promised him safety, wondering if he would see those burning eyes again. Could the Tiger be here, talking to him?

“Beast?” sounded the voice again. It came from nowhere, yet sounded everywhere, as close as a whisper in the ear and as far as a shout across a valley. It echoed in Simon’s mind and he clutched at his ears but still could not drown out the amused voice. “Beast, did you say?” The voice laughed suddenly and the air about Simon seemed to explode in frenetic vibration that pounded at his skull.

He screamed with all his might. “Yes, beast! It’s a beast, a murderous, wretched beast! And she is waiting for me down there!”

The voice laughed again, mocking. “My dear Simon, the beast has already caught you.”

“No, no, what are you talking about?” Simon kept his eyes shut tight and his hands on his ears but still this voice could talk to him. “Who are you?”

The voice ignored his question. “What will you do about the beast, Simon?”

“I’ll wait here until father finds me.”

“What if father can’t find you, Simon?”

“Then He will protect me.”

Silence. That was it, Simon thought. Those days at chapel came flooding back into his memory. He would save him! He would protect him! Simon began to pray, inwardly, desperately, pleadingly. A trickle of blood formed from his noise and dripped off his chin.

The voice again: “He? He who?”

"He. The Lord!" Simon's eyes were welled and red and swollen and his head grew heavier and he grew dizzier.

“The Lord? God? And how can He protect you, Simon?” The voice was jeering and sarcastic, full of malice and promises of horror. Simon shook his head.

“The Lord created the lamb. He created innocence, softness and love. He will watch over me and protect me from this beast, from this horrible, horrible beast!”

“The Lord created the lamb?”

Simon saw, for an instant, where the voice was going, and fear leapt into his chest and he screamed for the voice to go away, to go back to where it came from and to leave him alone. “He will protect me from you!”

“The Lord created the lamb, Simon? So who created the tiger?”

Simon let out a long, miserable wail and thrashed with his arms into the air around him. “No, no, no! Don’t say such things! The Tiger has fire in her burning eyes! The fires of hell! Yes… that’s right, the Devil created the Tiger, the Devil!”

“Are you so sure, Simon? Is not the Lord the most powerful? Is he not the beginning of all creation?”

“He is… he is. That’s why he will protect me.”

“If He is the beginning of all creation, Simon,” and the voice paused. Simon’s eyes widened in realization, in true terror. “Then it was Him who created the Devil.”

“No! He created softness and love and innocence! He did not create evil. He fights evil!”

“Simon, who created the Tiger if He created the Devil?”

Simon lashed out again, ferociously, his hands waving and fingers curled, like the paw of a Tiger. He tried to scratch at the voice, to tear the skin from its lips so that it could speak no longer.

"What hammer or anvil could craft such a beast?" Simon's voice was punctured by sobs and gasps. "In what furnace was the Tiger forged? Whose dreadful hands and dreadful feet could make such a beast? Whose art is it, such horrible, horrible art?"

“Such beauty, too, Simon. Such graceful, marvelous, symmetrical, precise beauty. If this beast was forged and hammered, it was done so in a furnace of divine fire. It was hit by a hammer of divine hand. “

“The Tiger kills!”

“Do men not?”

Simon was checked. He could not argue anymore. "No!" he lashed out at the trunk before turning palms on his own head and slapping as hard as he could. "No! No! No! Get out of there! Stop talking to me!" Sweat dripped from his shivering body and his eyes grew redder. At the corners of his mouth there formed froth and Simon began to splutter before a piercing pain shot through his brain and he screamed out in agony.

“Simon, who else could frame that fearful symmetry? Who else could fill those eyes with such mighty fire? He who made the lamb made the tiger! He who made beauty made repulsiveness! He who made good made evil!”

Simon crumpled, his back hunched, and sobbed hysterically. “No, no…” was all he could continue to say.

“Yes, yes!” The voice grew louder, less menacing, less fearful, but hit him harder and harder. “Yes, Simon! The Tiger is both beauty and fear! It is both graceful and ferocious! It kills, yet it nurtures! The Tiger was created by Him!”

“No! Shut up! Go away! Leave me alone. You are the beast!” Simon paused, checked by the revelation. “You are the beast! Get out of my head and stop corrupting me with your evil, with your sin! You are the beast!”

“Yes, Simon, I am the beast, and I am within you.”

Simon wretched and clutched at his stomach. “You are within me,” he gasped. He looked up toward the moon while it swirled in his vision. He could not see clearly and could not think clearly. He felt hot and was sweating and it cooled his body so that he shivered. His face turned red in patches and his limbs went numb and flopped to his side. He screamed out until his lost his voice and could scream no longer.

It pounded at his head. “You are within me,” he whispered. “You are within me. You are the beast. The beast is within me…”

“I am the beast.”

And through all the night Simon wept, wept for the end of innocence, and his head continued to sear and he lost all feeling in his body.


A Brief Explanation

The Tiger by William Blake is a poem that explores the nature of good, evil, human nature and the divine. The word 'symmetry' ultimately implies a kind of perfection, something so far removed from "humanity" that it must be divine - the work of God(s). When Blake implores "Did He who made the lamb make thee?" it is a juxtaposition of the innocence of the lamb and the deadly nature of the Tiger.

We are faced with a query of God - but more importantly, human nature. It is in the realisation that both the lamb and the Tiger are made by the same thing - whether God or simply the labeling, naming nature of humanity - that spells the end of innocence.

Did we, as humans, make lamb innocent? Or did God? Did we, as humans, make the Tiger ferocious? Or did God? What the lamb and Tiger have come to symbolise could be a direct consequence of either "possibility" - but it is the understanding that hand in hand with innocence comes its breaking is what I feel is important.

Perhaps, most importantly, is that the Tiger does not just symbolize the opposite of innocence - it symbolises human nature and the breaking of innocence that must happen to every child. Presumably, Blake does not believe in the concept of Original Sin.


Simon, the protagonist, is just a small boy, no taller than 5 feet high. He is probably only around 8 or 9 years old and belongs to a religious family.

We don't know for sure, but it is obvious he is lost in the jungle alone. His family might be on holiday.

Simon believes (and whether or not it is true is irrelevant) that he is being hunted by a Tiger. He has taken refuge high in a tree and not drank or eaten for 3 days. This obviously contributes to his delusional, hysterical state. It is when he calls the Tiger a “beast” that triggers his first auditory hallucination, a strange voice asking him back: “Beast?” Simon has already displayed stroke symptoms and will continue to, and this hallucination may possibly imply further psychological complications, or may be seen as being the voice of reason and science that will ultimately crush his innocence – a process each and every person must go through, albeit less dramatically.

The voice starts interrogating him about his beliefs. Will "He" - alluding to God - really save Simon? Who created the Tiger? Essentially, whoever created good created evil too. It is this shattering of Simon's innocence that exacerbates his stroke symptoms and he begins to panic as the truth smothers him, envelopes him.

The voice continues to push Simon into the realization that the beast, the Tiger, is just a creation. That something can be beastly is simply a label, a representation. That Simon thinks the Tiger is a beast only shows us that he has created a beast. That the beast is within him. That the beast is him.

It is at this point that his innocence is finally fully broken and he weeps all night and the completion of this transition is marked by the onset of severe stroke symptoms. Dying of thirst, Simon probably doesn't make it.

The Tiger, in my adaptation, is used to symbolize human nature and the chasing of all that is dark and evil in humanity - it is chasing Simon, catching him. In a way, it can be referred to as the wave of realization that ultimately comes crashing down on all of but is usually blunted as we are typically not alone. But Simon is alone, in a tree, by himself and is forced to go through the realisation by himself, his faith ultimately being a kind of collateral damage, a necessary sacrifice so that he might grasp reality.

Perhaps it is why I have created the stroke symptoms - physiologically, it fits. Simon is dehydrated, hasn't eaten nor moved in 2 days. But, more importantly, symbolically, the stroke might simply represent the huge impact of the loss of innocence on a little boy all by himself.

It is a tragic story and not an entirely faithful adaptation - but the same questions of lambs and tigers, of gods and devils are raised as they are in Blake's original piece, though perhaps the concept of innocence is far more embellished in this story.