T.S Eliot once said, “Blake’s poetry has the unpleasantness of great poetry.” William Blake’s “great poetry” is exemplified through his poems “The Chimney Sweeper” from his book Songs of Innocence and from Songs of Experience. These two poems offer insight to the devastating quandaries of society during his time. For example, chimney sweeping became an ordinary way of life for poor young boys, as they were considered physically ideal for such work. Both poems examine the bleak existence of a chimney sweeper. The two poems side by side further enhance Blake’s portrayal of those predicaments and it illuminates the social injustice he perceived. By reading “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, Blake’s intent to …show more content…
Conditions were harsh and at times cruel for these boys. They were seldom washed and slept in cellars on bags of soot. Years of accumulated soot and grime often produced cancer, and there are instances where boys were choked and suffocated to death by dust inhalation while attempting to clean chimneys. Casualties were frequent as well; boys became stuck in narrow flues at times or fell from climbing dilapidated chimneystacks (Glynn). Blake criticizes society, and blames the parents who put their children through such misery, when he says “And my father sold me while yet my tongue/ Could scarcely cry ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (lines: 2-3). in his Innocence poem. The boys own father, who is a product of the corrupt society, is the one who succumbed his child to these hardships, and through the deliberate spelling of sweep as “’weep,” it hints to the hardships these boys encountered. The poem has a singsong read, in tone with the theme of innocence, but they did not “sing” but rather cried these chants of “’weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (3). This innocence is exploited and oppressed, and yet they are unaware of the oppression imposed on them. Through Blake’s use of these poems, he highlights the pain the chimney sweepers went through and admonishes society for …show more content…
And the awareness of the Song of Experience poem and its blatant criticism and indignation, only makes the irony of the Innocence poem more penetrable and powerful. The combination of the two can effectively do justice to the indignation Blake feels. Firstly, the rhyme scheme of AABB sets the tone of an innocent and playful persona. However once the words are read, the stark contrast of the message with the “tune” of the poem becomes strikingly obvious; the irony in this exploits it further. The lighthearted AABB rhyme scheme, illustrates a chasm between reality and childhood. Also, the line “I sweep, and in soot I sleep” (4), finalizes the infinite hell in which the children are subject to, a hell that is belied by the speaker's deceptive optimism. Blake's use of dreams as strongholds of innocence also deepens the layers of irony, the "Angel who had a bright key” (13), "green plain leaping, laughing… And was in a river, and shine in the sun" (15-16), are all farcicalities in an atmosphere of a harsh reality. While the child basks on the bright connotations of the dream, the truth remains: he is utterly alone. The “angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy/ He'd have God for his father, and never want joy" (19-20), this is deeply ironic in that his father sold him off and that the church itself has no hand in aiding these destitute children, they wouldn’t even allow them into the church. When the children
The fact that they feel they can sit about the knee of their mother, in this stereotypical image of a happy family doesn’t suggest that the children in this poem are oppressed... ... middle of paper ... ... y has a negative view of the childish desire for play which clearly has an effect on the children. The fact that they the are whispering shows that they are afraid of the nurse, and that they cannot express their true thoughts and desires freely, which is why they whisper, and therefore shows that Blake feels that children are oppressed. I feel that the two poems from innocence which are ‘The Echoing Green,’ and ‘The Nurses Song,’ display Blake’s ideological view of country life which I referred to in my introduction, and show his desire for childhood to be enjoyed.
As time progresses technology increases and improves. However, this progression could pose as a serious problem for generations to come, and New York University department chair of communication arts Neil Postman expresses this concern in his 1992 book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. In the opening of Postman’s book he expresses that technology is indeed our friend because technology provides our society with fast and easy convenience and accessibility. As with most other things, there are always two sides to everything and Postman notes, that “of course, there is a dark side to this friend” referring to technology (Postman, 1992). Many people do not address the negative sides to technology and just turn a blind eye to them so it is refreshing to have someone point them out and discuss the issues technology possess on our society.
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.
The difference in the time periods of these two poems is crucial, as it severely alters the upbringing of the characters, their social projection, their self-image, and the types of problems that they face. The upbringing of children often has a great deal to do with their mental health and how they portray themselves to others as they grow older. After she mutilates herself in an attempt to make herself look beautiful, others take notice and comment on how pretty her corpse looks laying in the casket. In The Chimney Sweeper, the young chimney sweep finds enough hope in religion to keep him going.
William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” was mainly about the possibilities of both hope and faith. Although the poem’s connotation is that of a very dark and depressed nature, the religious imagery Blake uses indicates that the sweeps will have a brighter future in eternity.
Starting with the first stanza, Blake creates a dark and depressing tone. He uses words such as died, weep, soot, and cry to support this tone. In the first two lines the child shares his family with us, stating his mother’s death and the fact that his father sold him sharing that the child must come from a poor background “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue”(Lines 1-2). The image of a poor child getting tossed into another unhappy place sets the tone for the beginning of this poem. Blake uses the word “weep”, instead of “sweep” in the first stanza to show the innocence of the child “Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep”(3). The fact that the child cried “weep” instead of sweep shows that the child could not be any older than four. Blake describes that they sleep in soot also meaning they are sleeping in their death bed. The average life span of children who work in chimneys is ten years due to the harsh work environment. The child portrays sorrow in the last line of the first stanza “So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.”(4)
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
One way that Blake manifests the theme of a man being corrupted though experience is with imagery. For instance, in “The Echoing Green,” Blake creates imagery that portrays children playing “on the echoing green” with their families “sitting under the oak” (10, 13). The imagery paints a picture of a perfect
When Blake was inspired to write about these boys, their barbaric lives were not only common knowledge, but accepted. Throughout the passing years, however, history has lost sight of the horror they faced everyday. Therefore, familiarity with such details does help the reader to see more clearly Blake's indictment of a society that allows children to be subjected to almost unbelievable wretched conditions, and it also gives more force and point to the realism and imagery. (Nurmi, 15) History reveals that children usually began these lives at the age of 6 or 7 or even earlier. The job tormented their small bodies, leaving them to die with deformed ankles, twisted kneecaps and spines, or with "chimney sweeps cancer." The boys began their days long before sunrise until about noon when they "cried the streets" for more business. When it was time to return these young boys carried heavy bags of soot to the cellars and attics where they slept. Even the task of sleeping was torture. The boys owned nothing and were given nothing, leaving them with only the bags of soot that had swept for a bed.
The theme of authority is possibly the most important theme and the most popular theme concerning William Blake’s poetry. Blake explores authority in a variety of different ways particularly through religion, education and God. Blake was profoundly concerned with the concept of social justice. He was also profoundly a religious man. His dissenting background led him to view the power structures and legalism that surrounded religious establishments with distrust. He saw these as unwarranted controls over the freedom of the individual and contrary to the nature of a God of liberty. Figures such as the school master in the ‘schoolboy’, the parents in the ‘chimney sweeper’ poems, the guardians of the poor in the ‘Holy Thursday’, Ona’s father in ‘A Little girl lost’ and the priestly representatives of organised religion in many of the poems, are for Blake the embodiment of evil restriction.
Though this poem mainly describes the suffering of these children, William Blake wrote another poem also titled “The Chimney Sweeper” where he described how as these chimney-sweepers grew older, they began to realize how they were taken advantage of and how the promises of the Church were all just a big hoax. From these two poems, it can be inferred that Blake intentionally pointed out and revealed the malfeasance of the Church and society and how they exploited younger children due to their gullibility and innocence solely for the economy without having any regard for the children’s lives.
Both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience provide social criticism on the dangers that child chimney sweepers endure but, Songs of Experience provides better social commentary as Songs of Experience directly identifies the potential for death unlike Songs of Innocence which implicitly identifies the dangers child sweeps endure. In Songs of Innocence, the child chimney sweeper dreams that while he was “lock’d up in coffins of black…an Angel who had a bright key… open’d the coffins…set them all free” (Blake, “Innocence” 12-14). The child’s dream of freedom appears happy and optimistic when in reality it is quite chilling that the child views death as freedom. Blake presents the child chimney sweeper as optimistic to suggest that society needs to help the children find freedom so they do not wish to die. The social commentary in Songs of Innocence is implicit in order to emphasize the child’s inability to fully understand and c...
In 1789, English poet William Blake first produced his famous poetry collection Songs of Innocence which “combines two distinct yet intimately related sequences of poems” (“Author’s Work” 1222). Throughout the years, Blake added more poems to his prominent Songs of Innocence until 1794, when he renamed it Songs of Innocence and Experience. The additional poems, called Songs of Experience, often have a direct counterpart in Blake’s original Songs of Innocence, producing pairs such as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” In Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake uses musical devices, structure, and symbolism to develop the theme that experience brings both an awareness of potential evil and a tendency that allows it to become dominant over childhood
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.
In the William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the vision of children and adults are placed in opposition of one another. Blake portrays childhood as a time of optimism and positivity, of heightened connection with the natural world, and where joy is the overpowering emotion. This joyful nature is shown in Infant Joy, where the speaker, a newborn baby, states “’I happy am,/ Joy is my name.’” (Line 4-5) The speaker in this poem is portrayed as being immediately joyful, which represents Blake’s larger view of childhood as a state of joy that is untouched by humanity, and is untarnished by the experience of the real world. In contrast, Blake’s portrayal of adulthood is one of negativity and pessimism. Blake’s child saw the most cheerful aspects of the natural wo...