The Forests of the Night the war as it really was, as James Kirkup observed, an "acid portrait of those who played at being members of the [French] Resistance". The novel's theme and title come from the opening lines to William Blake's poem "The Tyger": "Tiger, tiger, burning bright - in the forests of the night." "The Forests of the Night" was translated in 1951 into English by Nora Wydenbruck; it has not been re-printed since. Francis is the son of the Comte de Balansun, whose family resides in the French town of Saint-Clar, near the Pyrenees. Francis, in the beginning of the novel, skips
Red John to be among Jane's final list of Red John suspects. In the season 3 finale, Jane tells the entire team all that he knows and recites the first verse of "Tyger Tyger". Kimball Cho knows the poem very well and recites the first two lines of the second verse: <poem> In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? </poem> When discussing what the poem means, Cho says, "Well, God made the lamb, but he also made the tiger. You can't have light without darkness. Life without death." This is also the mindset Red John's accomplices follow