William Blake's "The Tyger" is a profound and subtly disturbing work that, at its essence, seeks to understand the nature of God and whether or not He is responsible for creating the destructive forces represented by the tiger.
The key lines here are as follows:
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? (3-4)
These lines appear twice, once at the end of the first stanza, and then again at the end of the poem. On the surface level, Blake is asking what kind of power (be it the traditional God or something else entirely) made the tiger. On another, more abstract, interpretive level, Blake is wondering what is responsible for the "fearful symmetry" of the world. Throughout the poem, Blake grapples with this "fearful symmetry," referencing chaotic events such as the fall of the angels following Satan's failed rebellion (alluded to in the fifth stanza by "When the stars threw down their spears / And water'd heaven with their tears" (17-18)). As such, though Blake is ostensibly discussing a tiger, he's also struggling to come to terms with the concept of God, and he questions whether God is responsible for the destructive, chaotic events of the world. This question is never resolved, and the final ambiguity of the poem (which returns once more to the ominous "fearful symmetry") leaves the reader with a brilliantly subtle sense of unease.
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