Hello, please advise why Tyger is spelled with a Y instead of an I in Fahrenheit 451? My english teacher did not know.

There's also a short story called "Here There Be Tygers." My guess - and I'm normally a good guesser - is that it's an antiquated form of spelling from centuries ago when large parts of the world were unknown to cartographers. They would then nervously and superstitiously inscribe "Here There be Tygers" on those parts of the map that hadn't been properly explored.

Hi, Thanks for the wonderful 'guess'. Now I know 'Y'!

So can you tell me why Bradbury would have used Tyger with a Y in Fahrenheit 451?

You need to take a look at the poem "The Tyger" by William Blake.

I am sorry. I have read the poem and unable to find the reason why Bradbury used the spelling of Tiger with a "Y" (Tyger) instead of the familiar spelling of Tiger with an "I" in F451.

Since no one else has replied, without seeing the quote in context I'll hazard a guess that the word represents an idea such as an unknown fear given a definite if not entirely accurate form.

Thank you. I appreciate your reply.

I'd still like to look at this again to try to give jillian a more exact answer. But you'd have to narrow it down a bit. In which of the three parts of the book does "tyger" occur? And how far into that part?

By the way, I did notice that part III of the book is called "Burning Bright", which does correspond to the opening line of Blake's poem. So, subject to seeing the word in its exact context, it may very well be a Blake allusion.

"The Tyger" by William Blake is from a book Blake wrote called: Poems of Innocence and Experience. The Tyger (old english spelling chosen by Blake) symbolizes the corruption and raw animalistic power that comes with experience. It is a juxtaposition on the poem "The Lamb" which symbolizes innocence. In F451, RB is clearly saying (like Blake) that experience is not nesscessarily a good or positive thing. Burning books or any type of censorship of learning is a corruption. Are you beginning to see the connection?

For Jillian:

If memory serves me correctly, the story centers on a big-game hunter who determines to hunt dinosaurs. He goes to the local time machine company that hosts such excursions. Instead of paying strict attention to the the company representative's warnings and cautions about affecting the flow of time, he rushes off to the hunt. Things don't go well and, when he returns through the time portal, he notices the world is changed. He's stepped into an alternate reality where even the language is different.

What caused it? He stepped on the earliest incarnation of a butterfly, killing all future chance of its existence, thereby propelling him into an alternate line of probability.

I think it was Bradbury's way of playing with the readers, preparing them for the "hook" at the end of the story.

What the other folks have mentioned is also true about the early cartographers. Bradbury learned something from real life while he was growing up and incorporated it into his story.

B4 @ H2G2

[This message has been edited by intLek2L (edited 06-16-2004).]

Great explanation, intLek2L...

except you have described the story "A Sound of Thunder", not "Here There Be Tygers"!

- Phil

In an alternate future reality, "A Sound of Thunder" is titled "Here There Be Tygers," and William Blake's poem concerns tygers stopping by woods on a snowy evening: http://www.sdsmt.edu/student-orgs/tfs/reading/freethought/poems.html
This is what comes of totalitarian dictatorships burning all the books and forcing readers to try to memorize everything!

Writers who would like to give their words a hue of antiquity often use the old English spelling of the words. They may also emply ancient grammar and sentence structure. I've no clue where the Tyger reference is, but look around the text (ie, a couple of lines before and after) whether any of the characters attempted to sound a bit melodramatic (in the style of some Shakespeare characters).

Also, I don;t know for sure, but maybe Tiger is currently spelled Tyger in Britain. I know that a Tire in Britain is a Tyre, so perhaps Tyger is still a current word. Check the edition of the book - was it printed in Britain? If yes, then use the principle behind Ockham's Razor and assume that that's the answer.

Cheers, Tranaltor

...cue the resident Englishman.

Sorry, Translator, but we British spell tiger with an I. My understanding is that the spelling with a Y is simply archaic.

In the case of "Here There Be Tygers", Bradbury is alluding to medieval maps which suggested fearful things were lurking in uncharted regions and at the edge of the known world.

I don't know what Blake's excuse was, however.

- Phil

PS We do indeed spell TIRE (as in wheel) with a Y. But TIRE (as in exhaustion) we spell with an I.

... and so say all ex-subjects of Her Majesty like myself.