Close Reading Essay of The Poison Tree

The Poison Tree Close Reading Essay

In the poem “The Poison Tree”, William Blake uses metaphors, symbolism and allusions to show how anger can create something physical and that anger can be easily remedied by communication. The suppression of anger can lead to the cultivation of anger.

            The Poison Tree is a poem about how not forgiving a foe can lead to secretive resentment leading to the death of the foe. The first quatrain uses repetition to distinguish the anger against a friend and the anger against a foe. The speaker was able to forgive his friend by communicating to him that he was angry, but since he didn’t tell his foe that he was angry, the anger manifested into something physically harmful to the foe and mentally harmful to the speaker. Blake personified his wrath into a tree which grew from his anger and “[he] water’d it in fears, Night & morning with my tears,” (lines 5-6). The speaker’s joy when he sees the dead body of his foe on the ground because anger can you to do something you didn’t think was possible (the physical creation of a tree) and then later regret, “When the night had veil’d the pole/In the morning glad I see/My foe outstrech’d beneath the tree,” (line 14-16).

            The poison tree isn’t simply a metaphor for anger but is actually a physical poisoned tree created by the speaker’s personified anger. The tree comes from a seed of anger – the refusal to tell foe about anger - and it represents the lack of restraint and self-control. There is a general allusion to the story of The Garden of Eden from the Bible. The tree represents the tree of knowledge and grows fruit that tempts the foe because he knows he can’t have it. The foe steals into the speaker’s garden at night stealing the apple like Eve did. The unnatural sprawling of the foe that died is reminiscent of that of Christ on the cross when He was crucified. The actions of the foe take place before the events of the poem leaving the reader to guess how serious the offenses of the foe were. Blake causes the reader to infer that foe was a bully, and that it is now the speaker’s turn to bully the bully which is a reflection. Imagery is used a lot when talking about the tree and the poisoned apple, “And it grew both day and night,/Till it bore an apple bright;/And my foe beheld it shine,/And knew that it was mine,” (lines 12-16). The poet refers to both the apple and the tree using the word ‘it’ showing that the speaker doesn’t really care about his anger, just on getting his revenge. The Tempest’s Prospero manifests his anger into sinking the ship that carries the people who tried to usurp him, which is an action that takes place before the story begins. Though unlike the poem, Shakespeare uses a flashback in order to show what transpired to cause Prospero all this anger towards someone, while Blake never explains what caused the speaker to become so angry with his foe. Prospero’s anger grows for many years until the opportunity where they are all on a boat on the way back from a joyous occasion and e uses a spirit’s powers to try and kill them.