A Symbolic Analysis of William Blake's London

A Symbolic Analysis of William Blake's London

.........In his reflection "London," William Blake laments the poverty

faced by the lower class of modern, industrialized London, and he can

find no note of consolation or hope for their future. The poet uses

this theme to dramatically depict the conditions in which the

oppressed lower class is forced to live; he develops the theme through

the use of sounds, symbolism, and an ironic twist of words in the last

line that expresses Blake's ultimate belief in the hopelessness of the

situation. The poem is dominated by a rigid iambic meter that mirrors

the rigidity and immutability of the lives of the poor and the

oppressive class system.

.........The first stanza begins with the poet describing himself

walking through the "charter'd" streets of the city near the

"charter'd" Thames-every aspect of the city has been sanctioned and

organized by the ruling class-seeing expressions of weakness and woe

on the faces of all the people he meets. The streets and the river

make up a network that has been laid out and chartered by the wealthy

class to control the poor. The poet walks among the poor,

participating in the drudgery of their daily lives; he feels their

misery as they endlessly struggle to survive as pawns of the class

system.

.........In the second stanza Blake describes how in every voice of

every person he perceives their "mind-forg'd manacles." The people are

trapped, prisoners of the rigid class system that has been "forged" in

the minds of the elite class, whose members have taken measures to

prevent their wealth from ever reaching the poverty-stricken rabble.

This and all later stanzas focuses on the sounds that Blake hears,

particularly the cries of...

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...day where the poor are treated in much the same

way as the people of London two hundred years ago. It is not a

small-scale phenomenon-hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken people

continue to struggle through the trials of daily survival, and their

suffering weighs heavily on our consciences. The high standard of

living we enjoy in the United States is a result of the fact that we,

along with other powerful industrialized and developed nations,

control most of the wealth and markets of the world. The United States

alone controls 25% of the world's wealth with only 6% of its

population. Every extra dollar we spend on ourselves to further raise

our standard of living helps perpetuate the world's current economic

system that, like the class system of England two hundred years ago,

offers little hope of a better life to the great majority of suffering

poor.