Does absolute evil exist on this planet? Or is it just a figurative character necessary for the maintenance of a balanced ecosystem? God, as a great and venerated character beyond anybody’s ability of reach, must have made his own justifications for how he made his creations. Therefore, everything serves a purpose; the existence of good and bad is no exception. Perhaps, the majesty of God’s work requires these kinds of opposing forces. Examples of this notion are illustrated in both “The Tyger” by William Blake and “Do Seek their Meat from God” by Charles G.D. Roberts. Suggesting a contradictory statement, since God possesses the ability to provide the essential demands for the creatures on earth, why even bother subjecting them to things we consider “evils.” While humans seek creatures that are enough to be considered a menace to them – “evils,” these “evils” have their own undiscovered list of grievances as well. Creatures, after all, try to keep away from nature’s elimination by using unscrupulous ways to fulfill their basic survival needs, but the reality underlies that the strong survive and the weak die.
All creatures desire to maintain their lives in their habitats; however, the reality is that only those with sufficient power can escape obliteration by natural selection. This specified group referred to as the “evil” is represented by the tiger in “The Tyger” and the settler in “Do Seek their Meat from God.” Recall the word “evil.” They aren’t actual evils in that they are thieves and murderers but strong creatures that prevail in their environments and sit on the top of their respective food chains. Take into account that “evil” can only be applied to those that overpower another. For example, a tiger would be considered as an “evil” to a lamb but only a harmless animal to a lion. While William Blake uses “fearful symmetry” to portray the image of the fearsome tiger, Charles D. G. Roberts indirectly describes the settler as an “evil” when he breaks the plight and “shot through the loins” of the panther. Thus, the two “evils” share a common trait of having the ability to survive in their specific environments by eliminating the threat to protect themselves. God is considered a powerful yet mysterious figure in both texts, possessing the power of creation and alternation. With that being mentioned, an essential question may arise: “Why does God allow evil to exist?” Considering it from the perspective of “The Tyger,” Blake suggests that, without fear and danger, there could be no love and joy, or it could be his way of describing an ideal and balanced system.
The survival of the fittest is a crucial and necessary process of nature, but we cannot deny that, in that process, the weak get eliminated. The powerless figures represented in the two texts are the lamb and the panther/cubs in “The Tyger” and “Do Seek their Meat from God,” respectively. Even though the lamb spares neither pains nor efforts for their own sake to survive, they still possess no power to triumph over the “winners” of nature. Against stronger creatures, they act as the exact opposite of “evil.” This point gets further illustrated by the speaker, pointing out an irony, asking, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee [the tiger]?” Clearly, he sees the tiger as the violent, monstrous creature and the lamb as the gentle and helpless one. In addition to this, the panther in “Do Seek their Meat from God” fails to compete against the settler when the panther hears “a loud crack from [the settlers’] rifle.” And the cubs were unfortunately victimized by nature’s selection when the speaker reveals “dead bodies [of the cubs], now rapidly decaying.” Thinking outside the box, when making comparisons between two objects with different abilities, degrading one would make the other stand out. The same scenario is present in the relationship between the “evil” and the weak.
In conclusion, all creatures, including animals and humans, are no more than a vulnerable existence created by God. From nature’s choice of elimination, the strong survive and the weak fade away, and this cycles repeatedly. Just enough to be alike to how the sun and moon rotate, they end but to begin anew. Despite the absolute truth of how the cycle operates, the creatures themselves do not reconcile themselves to their elimination. Their willingness to survive is just a part of their inner instinct. Therefore, the creatures try to keep away from nature’s elimination by using unscrupulous ways to fulfill their basic survival needs. However, no one knows to what extent they could struggle towards, as their opponents are the “evils’ to them. By all means, the survival of creatures connects to the expenditure of nature’s resources, while nature has no intentional malice, it is nonetheless a threatening and dangerous place of potential fatality.
