A Poison Tree : Critical Analysis

A Poison Tree : Critical Analysis
Human beings, along with the ability to reason and question, possess the capacity to
hate, and yet also to forgive. Unfortunately, forgiving someone is not always as easy as
holding a grudge against them and this lack of control over one’s actions is inherent to
human nature. In “A poison tree”, William Blake critically discusses these two opposing
forces, uncovering the inherent weakness in humans, and the effects of these innate
flaws.
Through the use of extended metaphors and vivid imagery, Blake symbolically portrays
this fundamental flaw through the poem. The central theme in the poem is hatred and
anger, dominating much of the author’s thoughts. Blake expresses this through the
introduction of a clever parallelism – the treatment of anger between a friend and a foe.
Through this, Blake emphasizes the nature of anger – while expressing and letting go of
wrath ends it, suppression nurtures it. Blake startles the reader with the clarity of the

poem, and with metaphors that can apply to many instances of life. A Poison Tree is an
allegory. The tree here represents repressed wrath; the water represents fear; the apple
is symbolic of the fruit of the deceit which results from repression. This deceit gives rise
to the speaker’s action in laying a death-trap for his enemy. The deeper meaning of the
poem is that aggressive feelings, if suppressed, almost certainly destroy personal
relationships.
“And it grew both day and night
Till it bore an apple bright”
Blake further symbolizes this in the next two stanzas. He appears to metaphor the
repression of anger and hatred to ‘a poison tree’, thus giving it an identity. The
personification in “A Poison Tree” exists both as a means by which the poem’s metaphors
are revealed, supported, and as a way for Blake to forecast the greater illustration of the
wrath. The wrath the speaker feels is not directly personified as a tree, but as something
that grows slowly and bears fruit. In the opening stanza the speaker states, “My wrath
did grow.” The speaker later describes the living nature of the wrath as one which, “grew
both day and night,” and, “bore an apple bright.” This comparison by personification of
wrath to a tree illustrates the speaker’s idea that, like the slow and steady growth of a
tree, anger and wrath gradually accumulate and form just as mighty and deadly as a
poisoned tree.
“And I water’ d it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles”
To understand the metaphorical sense of the poem, one must first examine the title, “A
Poison Tree,” which alerts the reader that some type of metaphor will stand to dominate
the poem. In the second stanza, Blake employs several metaphors that reflect the
growing and nurturing of a tree which compare to the feeding of hate and vanity
explored by the speaker. The verses, “And I watered it …with my tears” show how the
tears life lead an object of destruction. The speaker goes further to say, “And I sunned it
with smiles” describing not only false intentions, but the processing of “sunning”, giving
nutrients to a plant so that it may not only grow and live, but flourish. In both of these
metaphors, the basic elements for a tree to survive, water and sunlight are shown in
human despair and sadness.
Blake called the original draft of “A Poison Tree” “Christian Forbearance,” suggesting that
what is meant to appear as a gentle attitude is often a mask for disdain and anger.
Furthermore, Blake believed that the attitudes of piety that adherents of conventional
Christianity were taught to maintain actually led to hypocrisy, causing people to pretend
to be friendly and accepting when they were not. The righteousness that the
conventional religion prescribed, Blake believed, allowed people to hide evil intent and to
perform evil deeds, such as stifling the healthy growth of children, under the cover of
appearing virtuous.
“And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree”
The religious context of the poem is also evident in two metaphorical allusions made by
the speaker towards the end of the poem. Blake, being a religious visionary, has also
criticized the views and actions of Christianity. This is evident in the symbol of the
‘poison tree’, which can be seen to make direct biblical reference to the tree of

knowledge, representing the evil existing within man. Thus, as the garden is symbolic of
the Garden of Eden, the apple is symbolic of apple which brought Adam and eve to their
demise. It is the evil and poison that is bared from anger, the fruit of the poison tree. As
in the biblical story, the apple here is beautiful on the outside, while poisonous and
deadly underneath. By presenting the apple, Black is symbolic of the Serpent,
maliciously deceiving his foe and bringing his demise. The serpent in Black is his
weakness, and just like he, all humans have this inherent flaw inside of them. Black uses
this to criticize Christian forgiveness, expressing that while Christians believe in ‘turning
the other cheek’, by forgiving and repressing anger, they are ignoring the basic flaw
existing in our human nature. Symbolically, the speaker represents God, the foe and
garden represent Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the tree represents the Tree
of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis. If this analogy is true, it shows God rejoicing
in killing his enemies, which most people think the God they know would never do.
Conclusively, “A Poison Tree” teaches a lesson and asserts a moral proposition rather
than offering a critique of a theological system, the lesson is less concerned with anger
than with demonstrating that suppressing the expression of feelings leads to a corruption
of those feelings, to a decay of innocence, and to the growth of cunning and guile.
Repeatedly in Songs of Experience, not just in “A Poison Tree,” Blake argues that the
religious doctrines intended to train people, especially children, in virtue are cruel and
cause harm. In addition, Blake depicts those who implement religious discipline as
sadistic. Blake’s poetry, while easy to understand and simplistic, usually implies a moral
motif on an almost basic level. The powerful figurative language in “A Poison Tree” is so
apparent that it brings forth an apparent message as well. The poem is not a celebration
of wrath; rather it is Blake’s cry against it. Through this, Blake warns the reader of the
dangers of repression and of rejoicing in the sorrow of our foes.