Fire and Anger

In our everyday speech, we use fire or dynamite as a metaphor for anger. An aspect of this metaphor that's highlighted is the fact that some people let their anger build up and eventually "explode." These people will yell and scream and maybe even become violent. However, this metaphor hides the fact that some people don't explode...some people don't vent their anger. These people hold their anger inside and let it fester - they may or may not ever explode.

The metaphor in Blake's poem does the exact opposite. He uses the metaphor of anger=poison tree to show that not everybody is verbally angry. It highlights the fact that people let anger grow inside of them and don't let it out. The metaphor hides the fact that some people don't let their anger build up they explode. It's a very interesting metaphor...something I haven't thought about anger as being. I'm the type of person that doesn't express my anger, so the metaphor Blake uses works much better than the metaphor of anger=explosion. If we used Blake's metaphor in our ordinary language, we would use sentence such as, "my anger is growing inside me" and "don't water my anger." The first sentence is actually not uncommon, so maybe our society has picked this up from Blake...?