The implied
creator of "The Lamb" is Jesus, the Lamb of God. The poem asks, "Little Lamb, who
made thee?" and the question is answered in the second half of the poem where the poet
says, "He is called by thy name; for he calls himself a Lamb: He is meek and he is mild, He
became a little child." Jesus came to earth as a "little child" to both atone for
the sins of mankind and to show the Creator's gentle nature and was himself described as perfect
and "gentle." In the Old Testament, perfect lambs were sacrificed in symbolic rituals,
or demonstrations of faith, so that God would one day provide a means of atonement. Because of
this, mankind could be returned to his prefall state and restored to intimacy with their holy
Creator. In this poem, Jesus the Lamb of God is the Creator, and Blake reminds readers that his
nature is "good" and innocent enough to bring the expected atonement.
In contrast, "" meditates upon the dangerous and violent animal, the tiger.
Some read the creator of the tiger to be Satan himself and point to Biblical interpretations of
Satan as a "roaring lion" and to the alluson to the fall of Satan and his angel
followers in the poem. Others say the tiger represents the evils of industrialization,
contrasting the "anvil," "hammer," and "furnace" (metalwork) to
thescenes of "The Lamb." Most would agree that the Creator is the God of the Old
Testament again, and that the speaker is baffled how a God who made the innocent lamb, and who
was the Innocent Lamb, could allow such a beast to exist. "Did he who made the lamb make
thee?" the speaker asks, in terror and wonder.
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