Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
The serial killer ‘Red John’ whispered the first stanza of Blake’s famous poem to the Mentalist, Simon James as the latter was wrapped in cellophane by murderously inclined college pretenders to Red John’s grotesque ‘throne’. Much debate has followed since as to the possible significance of this poem/riddle, especially as the poem seemed to suggest a link to the whereabouts of the missing psychic love interest, Kristin. Interestingly one of our last glimpses of the Mentalist shows him smiling ‘as if ‘ his worries have somehow been alleviated.
Surely the crux of the poem hands around the phrase ‘fearful symmetry’ : symmetry is more than ‘sameness’…it is reflection and refraction. Perhaps it is not that Kristin’s confidence about Red John’s intentions originate from arrogance, stupidity or even that ‘she’ is Red John? Rather than she is his TWIN! Hence she can be understanding, compassionately communicative and provocative? It would also tie in with the Blakean interest in ‘fearful symmetry’ between the songs of Innocence and experience. Each sequence reflects and refracts the other- even defines the other.