Answer. William Blake’s “A Poison Tree” basically uses two symbols (an apple and a tree) to relate its meaning. The tree represents the growing anger in the speaker’s heart against his enemy and the apple represents the “fruit” of that anger, an action, in the poem, murder.

What is the meaning of poison tree?

A Poison Tree is a short and deceptively simple poem about repressing anger and the consequences of doing so. The speaker tells of how they fail to communicate their wrath to their foe and how this continues to grow until it develops into poisonous hatred.

What does the poison tree allude to?

The allusion in “A Poison Tree” is to the story of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and the Fall of Man in the biblical Book of Genesis. Blake was very much interested in religion, and this was well known by the audience of his day.

What is the main theme of poison tree?

The principal theme of “A Poison Tree” is not anger itself but how the suppression of anger leads to the cultivation of anger. Burying anger rather than exposing it and acknowledging it, according to “A Poison Tree,” turns anger into a seed that will germinate.

What does the poison tree metaphorically represent in the poem by Blake?

“A Poison Tree” As a Representative of Hatred: The poet has discussed the duality of human nature in this poem. He says that his anger with his friend vanishes as soon as he expresses it. But he does not air his annoyance with his foe which grows and morphs into something poisonous.

What does the apple represent in A Poison Tree by William Blake?

The apple represents the anger growing large and ripening. The apple has been chosen as a symbol because it is a common fruit and hatred and revenge are common feelings in human beings. The apple refers to the apple in the biblical story of the Garden of Eden.

What is the extended metaphor in A Poison Tree?

The poem uses the extended metaphor of a growing poison tree to express this idea of the dangers of suppressed anger, and the length of the poem’s second section gives formal representation to this argument. In other words, the poem gets long as the speaker’s anger grows.

Who is the persona in A Poison Tree?

In “A Poison Tree”, the speaker makes his presence felt through the use of several first-person grammatical indicators. The speaker can also be seen as a persona of William Blake himself. The speaker lets himself be seized by the growing anger.

Who is the foe in A Poison Tree?

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the poem’s tree. The Serpent is the speaker, both tempting and deceitful. And Adam and Eve are the foes, both guilty of disobedience.

What does bore an apple bright mean?

Stanza 3: ‘And it grew both day and night’ and ’til it bore an apple bright’ are meaning that his illusion with his enemy is growing and growing until it became a strong and tempting thing. His illusion has a metaphor and it is an apple.

Why did the foe want the fruit?

Answer: The enemy sees the apple like this because the speaker has hidden his poison anger beneath the shiny, smiling surface. The enemy sees the anger apple in the speaker’s garden. The enemy tries to steal the apple at night when he sneaks into the garden of the speaker.

What does sunned with smile mean?

The line clearly means that the poet hid his anger by his smile and other deceptions. But this thing made his anger grow.

How did the speaker nurture his tree?

Answer: When the speaker in the poem is angry with his friend, he expresses it and his anger vanishes. But when he is angry with his enemy, he doesn’t express it but suppresses it. … However, since the tree had been nurtured by the speaker’s angry mind, it has become a poison tree bearing poisonous fruits.

How does the poet grow the poison tree?

The poison tree grew because of the anger and negativity that lurked in the soul and mind of the poet. As the poet kept ascribing about the things that his enemy had done to him, the poison tree kept growing. The liquid of tears and fears of the poet usually nourished the poison tree of anger.

What type of rhyme was used in the poem A Poison Tree?

AABB

In this poem, the rhyme scheme is: AABB. This means that in each four-line stanza, the first two lines rhyme (their rhyming sound is indicated with an A), and the last two lines rhyme (B). These rhyming pairs are called couplets, probably because they are like little verbal couples.

What does the Garden symbolize in A Poison Tree?

Tree – As in The Human Abstract, the tree growing in A Poison Tree is an all-encompassing growth in the mind which is dark, evil and deceitful, resulting in physical and spiritual death. Apple – The reference to an ‘apple bright’ alludes to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.

What does veiled the pole mean?

It seems that the speaker is blaming his foe, or calling him a thief. This happens when it’s super-dark out. In the phrase “night had veiled the pole,” pole refers to the top of the earth, as in the “north pole,” but it can also mean the pole star, also known as the North star, also known as Polaris.

What is the meaning of deceitful wiles?

A wile is a “crafty, cunning, or deceitful trick.” “Deceitful wiles,” then, are super-deceitful tricks (or really, really cunning traps). The speaker suggests that he is a very deceptive person and that he is planning something very sinister and mischievous.

Is there irony in A Poison Tree?

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.

What is the effect of hatred on the poet in the poem A Poison Tree?

The poet expressed his anger, everything was fine, but when he kept it inside, it began to grow, eventually becoming a metaphorical tree with poison fruit. The foe ends up under the tree, destroyed by the speaker’s pent up anger.

Why did the wrath grow?

He feared that if he expressed his anger to him, his enemy would do harm to him. So he suppressed his anger. Day and night he shed tears thinking about the ill or the injustice that had been caused by his enemy to him. Thus, he watered the tree of anger with his tears, allowing the anger to grow.

What two things does Blake compare in A Poison Tree?

In “A Poison Tree,” Blake is comparing his wrath, which means anger, with the nurturing of a tree. This is what we would call an extended metaphor, since he carries it throughout the entire poem.

What tree did the speaker grow?

See
Log in here. In “A Poison Tree,” the speaker grows a tree based on negative emotions that he keeps to himself instead of expressing those feelings to his foe. He notices that when he is angry with his friend and has a conversation about those feelings, his anger ends.

How did the speaker water the tree?

The poet watered the tree with his tears. At last the tree produced a fruit. The enemy entered into the speaker’s garden. He tempted his enemy to eat it.

What happened to the foe at the end?

Answer. Explanation: This ‘apple bright’ attracts the attention of his enemy, who then sneaked into the speaker’s garden one night and ate the apple from this tree; when the speaker finds his enemy the next morning, his foe is lying dead under the tree, having eaten the poisoned fruit.

How does the poet use the image of tree to bring out the destructive effect of suppressed anger?

How does the poet use the image of a tree to bring out the destructive effect of suppressed anger? Answer: The speaker waters his suppressed anger with fears and tears. He ‘suns’ it with smiles and deceitful wiles.

Which sentence best describes a theme of the poison tree?

A Poison Tree: Who wrote it? A Poison Tree: Part A- Which of the following best describes a major theme of the poem? Bottling up one’s feelings leads to resentment and even violence. You just studied 30 terms!

How are the results different in the two instances in the poem A Poison Tree ‘?

How are the results differ in the two instances? Answer: Expression of anger in the first instance relieves the person of all ill-feeling, whereas suppression of anger in the second instance poisons him all the more because it grows. Question 4.