A POISON TREE

OVERVIEW

MEANING OF LINESStanza 1

• The persona is angry with his friend and talk it out. Thus, his anger dissipated, and the friendship remains intact. However, when he is angry with his enemy, he keeps quiet. As a result, his anger grows even more intense within him.

Stanza 2• Day and night, he let his anger flourish. The persona act in deceitful ways.

Stanza 3

• Trough the persona’s efforts, the poison tree of anger eventually bears fruits – ‘an apple bright’ which the enemy clearly recognises as the persona’s. the apple is very attractive to the enemy

Stanza 4

• The ‘apple’ is attractive and lures the enemy who unsuspectingly sneaks into the persona’s garden at night. During the night, the ‘pole star’ is hidden and cannot protect or guide the enemy from the danger of the ‘apple bright’. The ‘pole star’ is the North Star or Polaris, a bright star permanently in the sky still used by navigators to avoid dangers while travelling. The ‘foe’ eats the apple and is poisoned, much to the satisfaction of the persona.

Theme

Anger: the basic human emotion which sets the events of this poem in motion. Although it is not necessarily wrong in itself, how we go about dealing with anger is extremely important.

Deception: the speaker bottles things up and does not talk about his feelings to his enemy. The enemy sneaks into the garden in the dead of night to take the fruit.

Communication: the poet/speaker communicates a direct moral lesson to the reader about the disastrous consequences of his own failure to communicate with another person.

ELEMENTS OF THE POEM

SETTING

PLACE• Persona’s garden, probably in England, but it can be

anywhere as the poem is an allegory.

TIME• Not specified, but events happen from morning until

night for a period of time

PERSONA• An intelligent and scheming

person who can act well and be hypocritical in his friendship with his foe

message

Do not suppress negative feeling

If we have negative feelings like anger, we

must resolve the issue at source. It is best to

communicate how we feel

In A Poison Tree, Blake warns that remaining silent about our anger

only makes us bitter and even evil. Suppressed anger is

dangerous as it can have a destructive effect on society. For example, there have been many

recent cases of people with unresolved anger who went on

shooting rampage.

Moral value

Truthfulness

forgivenessRationality and

moderation

1. What happened when he did not tell his foe?• His wrath began

to grow.

2. How could the foe possibly know that the apple bright belongs to the persona• perhaps the

persona told the foe in someway about it. Perhaps the object of envy (apple bright) very clearly belongs to the persona because it is in the persona territory

3. What do you think the apple represents?

• The apple represents the poisonous fruit of suppressed anger

4. How did the persona tend to his plant?• He ‘watered it in

fears’ and ‘tear’, and ‘sunned’ it with ‘smiles and decieitful wiles’