give critical analysis of the poison tree poem by william blake
Answers
Answer:
This powerful and curious little poem is about the power of anger to become corrupted into something far more deadly and devious if it is not aired honestly. The enemy may have stolen the apple (and trespassed on the speaker’s property – he ‘stole’ into his garden, after all), but he was deceived into thinking that something deadly and poisonous (the speaker’s anger) was something nice and tasty (the apple). In other words, both the speaker and his foe are deluded: the speaker because he seems unaware that he has diminished himself by his actions, and the foe because he little realised that the apple he stole was poisoned. Since the apple represents human enmity and resentment, the line ‘And he knew that it was mine’ resonates with bitter irony, because in actual fact both the foe and the speaker fail to realise that the poisoned apple has infected both of them, and belongs to them jointly. Their mutual hatred has corrupted them both.
Explanation:
A Poison Tree is a poem that focuses on the emotion of anger and the consequences for our relationships should that anger be suppressed. It deals with the darker side of the human psyche.