What is the theme of the poem "The Tyger" by William Blake?

One
possible interpretation of 's "" is that the eponymous tiger represents the spirit of
the industrialization process that Britain was witnessing at the time the poem was written. The
factories at the heart of this process would remain open twenty-four hours a day, and the lights
of the burning furnaces seen through the windows of the factories at night may have resembled
the orange and black stripes of a tiger.

Throughout the poem, the speaker
seems to be asking what can be inferred about menor about Godthat this "fearful" and
"deadly" process is allowed to happen. Indeed, the speaker wonders "What dread
hand" could possibly have created this process, and whether the God who made the lamb could
also have made this tiger. He wonders too whether the God who made the tiger did "smile his
work to see." These questions seem loaded with an incredulous and accusatory
tone.

As a Romantic poet, William Blake would have been horrified at the
industrialization process. Many Romantic poets, like Blake and Wordsworth, wrote (particularly
prescient) poems to warn that this process would destroy the natural world. The collection from
which this poem is taken, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience,
describes two different worlds. The first world, of innocence, is the world before
industrialization, and the second world, of experience, is the world during industrialization.
"The Tyger" is taken from the Songs of Experience section of the
collection.