“Acceptance to the Cruel Reality: A Marxist Reading on William Blake”

Marxist views can be frequently spotted within William Blake’s works. The argument that “human interactions are economically driven and are based on a struggle for power between different social classes” is deeply rooted within the lines of Blake’s work. (Gardner, Pg. 146). In fact, “The Chimney Sweeper,” which was first published in 1789, a full half a century before Karl Marx first publicized his Marxist theory in 1848, has several instances of Marxist tones. Critic, Janet E. Gardner, argues that the theological similarities between the views expressed in the poem “Chimney Sweeper” and Karl Marx’s beliefs are easily found. For example, Karl believed that literary characters could be “divided into powerful oppressors and their powerless victims (Gardner, Pg. 145).” Similarly, Blake presents the character Tom Dacre as an accepting victim of the horrible indictment within the economically driven arrangements. An arrangement created to sell and buy children only in order to work and cripple them into a fatal labor. Both Marx and Blake note that the child labor could have come to an end earlier, but the naïve mind-set of the described characters presents them in a dream like nostalgia that even when they “awoke in the dark,” Tom “was [still] happy and warm.” Continuing, the church or government controls the mind of the children in labor; Blake echoes in an extreme sense of the children not seeing the truth or “light” and end up settling with the realities of their life. Similarly, Blake details suggest that the church brainwashes the children into believing that through tedious and cruel hours or if Tom “be a good boy, he’d have God for his father (Blake in Sweeper, L. 18-19).” Blake depicts a metaphysical defiance toward customary ...

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...struggle for power between social classes. The children were oppressed and had a minimal existence during a time when it was socially acceptable. In this work, Blake attacks the church and crown for perhaps their callousness to the difficulties of the lowest class of the economic latter. The church is used as a vehicle to get the economic and customary roles of society in motion. For example, the speaker is a young, unfortunate, and oppressed boy; however, he continues to fulfill his societal obligations in his heartbreaking acceptance to indicate the more devastating indictment of social and economic extremes that sell, purchase, and ultimately, kill and cripple child in harsh labor conditions. It is only once people accepted the cruel reality of their destructive behavior of their past that these horrific instances will cease to continue or repeat in the future.