The Serpent Inside of Us
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 disposition. In many of his poems, William Blake critically observes human nature and its different aspects, but in “A Poison Tree”, he specifically discusses human weakness and the effects of humans’ inherent flaws. Through the use of extended metaphors and vivid imagery, he compares two opposing forces in human beings. In “A Poison Tree”, William Blake uncovers the inherent weakness in humans by symbolically portraying characteristics of good and evil. The first stanza introduces a comparison between a friend and a foe through clever parallelism. Blake begins his poem by writing “I was angry with my friend: / I told my wrath, my wrath did end” (1-2). He continues to say “I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow” (3-4). The similarity of lines 1-2 and 3-4 acts as a parallel comparison, with the first part depicting forgiveness, and the second part portraying wrath. The parallelism makes the two opposites stronger, for it emphasizes t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 937
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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