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Critical analysis of songs of innocence and experience
Childhood event narrative writing
Compare and contrast between songs of innocence and experience
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Can changing the mindset the story is told from change the outlook of a story? Can two stories with the same topic, written by the same author make you feel two very different ways? William Blake illustrated this to a perfection with the poems “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence and “The Chimney Sweeper” from the Songs of Experience. The two poems have the same concept but are told from two different perspective. One from an innocent view of the world and one from someone with the experience of the world. Songs of Innocence contrast with Songs of Experience from the speaker of poem to the tone it is told to the imagery each poem possess. The speaker in “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence is innocent blind to the facts of the world. He knows so little about the world, “And …show more content…
The knowledge he possess makes him feel angry and he directs it at the church. He implies to the reader that the church makes profits from his suffering and miserable life. This indicated that the speaker felt as if the church survives on the pain of innocent children. The speaker also feels as if the church is selling the story that may or may not be true to satisfy the children. “Who make up heaven of our misery.” (Blake “Experience”). The way the speaker describe is the church wants to prevent people from the horrible truth. “Where are thy father and mother? say? They are both gone up to the church to pray.” (Blake “Experience”). It is implied that the problems the child face are directly affected by the problems pertaining to the church and God. The way the child’s parents fail to recognize his unhappiness and pain, they fail to see the lack of spiritual truth in the way the church handles everything. “And because I am happy and dance and sing, they think they have done me no injury: And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King.” (Blake
Why I Left the Church” by Richard Garcia is a poem that explores the ongoing and conflicting relationship between a child’s fantasy and the Church. Although the majority of the text is told in present tense, readers are put through the lenses of a young boy who contemplates the legitimacy of the restricting and constricting nature of worship. It is a narrative that mixes a realist approach of storytelling with a fantasy twist that goes from literal metaphors to figurative metaphors in the description of why the narrator left the church. The poet presents the issue of childhood innocence and preset mindsets created by the Church using strong metaphors and imagery that appeal to all the senses.
The father sees himself asking if his child is a “god…that [the father] sites mute before [him,” and then asking if he himself is “a god in that [he] should never disappoint?” The father first describes his child as a god because he feels that his son is a being that is untouchable, and it to be able to fully connect with him is something the father does not comprehend. The father then describes himself as a god, asking if he failed to be like a god in his child’s eyes and be perfect in every way. Another metaphor in the poem are the books. The father uses books to connect with his son, much like how Christians use the Bible, a book, to connect with their God. The Bible is something that can have a positive influence on the lives of Christians and support them through their lives all through the use of words. This is similar to the books the father uses. The father does not know how to be a positive influence on his son, so he uses books as a medium to communicate with his son due to the fact that he cannot think of what to say himself. By using these metaphors, the father is comparing his and his child’s relationship to one of a mortal and a god: a relationship that is not familial love, but rather one of a love or worship for a divine being. The father feels that he cannot have a good relationship with his son because his child is something that he cannot understand no matter how hard he tries. He is also worried that he will never live up to his son’s expectations and will fail to support
This letter is describing his relationship with his ex-wife, and how he lacks home and a family. He places blame on God for different reasons such as his attraction for young girls. This need to blame God for his actions shows self-conceptions in the form of dirtiness, ugliness, and guilt that he kept locked inside in order to keep a sense of self-superiority. He sees everything that happens in the world as God’s fault, not his nor anyone
...a fresh positive mind which helps them to survive. The boy is young and it’s hard for any child his age to understand the reality of life in certain situations that is why the man consistently attempts to help the boy understand what they are going through and what it is going to take to survive.
What would literature be had every author used the same perspective for every single story? Literature would not be as well received as it currently is received. Take three American short stories, “Hills Like White Elephants,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” for example. These stories, by Hemingway, Faulkner, and Gilman respectively, each utilize a different a point of view. The perspective of a story heavily influences the impact of the story on a reader and that impact varies based on the content of the story.
...his was the perfect day of his childhood. This day to shape the days upon.” This shows the simplicity of the man’s life and how something as simple as this memory can stay vivid and detailed in his memory. "… he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different." (pg 27). Many years after his wife committing suicide he would start to wonder what life would be like if she was around. For me this applies, as sometimes I question how life would be different for me if my parents had never broken up. The man would find it hard to confront his feelings about his wife as I find it hard to confront thinking about my parents. For us to think about our family it hurts but we still do it. I believe this is an important issue you have brought to the reader as it has made me think about things in my life.
In Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789 and 1794), William Blake arouses readers' minds and leads them into a path of finding their own answers and conclusions to his poems. He sets up his poems in the first book, Songs of Innocence, with a few questions as if they were asked from a child's perspective since children are considered the closest representation of innocence in life. However, in the second book, Songs of Experience, Blake's continues to write his poems about thought-provoking concepts except the concepts happen to be a little bit more complex and relevant to experience and time than Songs of Innocence.
Because my thoughts on religion and god are so unclear in my life, it led me to interpret the whole situation differently and with different symbolism that is more adjacent with my life. I could still comprehend what the author was trying to say, but I couldn’t relate to his interpretation. I can see how a boy might be introduced to something that is too powerful for him at the moment. The experience gives him a wound that is hard to recover from. For example, the act of making love is a wonderful thing if it is done in a pure environment. But, if a boy develops a relationship with an older woman and is not ready to lose his virginity, and the woman is pushing for it, he might enter into something that he is not ready to deal with.
The children couldn’t accept what they thought was so horrible. There was a lot of ignorance and carelessness portrayed throughout this short story. The theme of ungratefulness was revealed in this story; The author depicted how disrespecting someone can inturn feed you with information you may wish you never knew and how someone can do one wrong thing and it immediately erases all the good things a person did throughout their
Interestingly enough, William Blake's poems from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience usually provide common topics but opposite perspectives; each perspective accomplished my means of unique writing techniques. "The Shepherd" from Songs of Innocence and "The Garden of Love" from Songs of Experience have in common the experiences of a shepherd but "The Shepherd" creates a joyful and friendly mood through the word choice of Blake while "The Garden of Love" creates a sorrowful mood by means of imagery.
When reading the two poems the reader can easily see that as a child the speaker was carefree, innocent, and oblivious to the outside world. As an adult the speaker realizes that the world is a different place. The speaker carefree innocence has now been corrupted. William Blake uses imagery, tone, and diction to validate his theme of man being born innocent and is corrupted through
that none have innocence and even the best among us can be brought down to a
In doing this, the usher of the church on “Fifth Avenue,” abandoned someone less fortunate in order to maintain a good appearance. This “house of God,” which should be opening its doors to give a he lping hand, turns away a man in need of help. Hughes shows betrayal in the same poem, when the less fortunate man asks St. Peter if he can stay. St. Peter replies, “You ca...
The Song of Innocence and Experience is a collection of poems written by William Blake. “Innocence” and “Experience” are two definitions of consciousness that rethink John Milton’s existential-mythic states of “Paradise” and the “Fall”, this coincides with the romantic notion that adolescence is a state of protected innocence instead of original sin and yet is still not immune to the fallen world and its institutions.
In the poem, “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake, the author attempts to educate the reader about the horrors experienced by young children who are forced into labor at an early age cleaning chimneys for the wealthy. The poem begins with a young boy who has lost his mother but has no time to properly grieve because his father has sold him into a life of filth and despair. The child weeps not only for the loss of his mother and his father’s betrayal, but also for the loss of his childhood and innocence. Blake uses poetry in an attempt to provoke outrage over the inhumane and dangerous practice of exploiting children and attempts to shine a light on the plight of the children by appealing to the reader’s conscience in order to free the children from their nightmare existence.