Name: Muhammad Abdullah Sheikh
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Subject: English
Semester 1
Roll No: 14001134033
Submitted To: Muniba Saeed
Poem: A Poison Tree
Q No1: Write down the summary of “A Poison Tree” by William Blake?
Ans: Summary
“The Poison Tree” by William Blake provides a clear lesson on how to handle anger both with a friend and enemy.
In this poem the poet describes a friend getting angry at his friend. Because the speaker knew and liked this person, he explained his feelings and the conflict was resolved. The anger ended. On the other hand, the speaker clashed with a person that he did not like. He held that irritation inside and did not express or tell the other person what was wrong. That resentment began to grow inside the speaker. The poet says that he waters the budding tree with fear and tears every day and even the night. Still, the enemy does not know of this growing fury. Fear can make a person act out of character and lose his emotional balance. Deceptively, the speaker employs his smiles as though it was the application of the sun to this toxic tree. With charm, he allows no interjection or awareness of his wrath.
Finally, this tree bears the fruit of the narrator’s fury in the form of a beautiful, appealing apple as in the Biblical forbidden fruit. The enemy desires the apple and realizes that it belongs to the speaker.
The last stanza brings the anger to an end; however, the narrator has lost his humanity. He now is glad that the enemy is dead. The fruit of his antagonism lured the enemy into the garden; he ate the apple; and now the foe has been eradicated. The last couplet indicates that the narrator finds comfort in the death of the other man.
Blake uses the poem as a warning to those who harbor grudges and allow the feelings of resentment to stay inside without dealing with them. Communication becomes the only...