The Chimney Sweeper Analysis

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.

Right away in the first lines of the poem we learn through the child narrator his life is about to change dramatically for the worse. “’When my mother died I was very young, / And my father sold me while yet my tongue / Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!'” (1-2). The use of the word ‘weep’ is a clever play on words to get the reader to understand the grief the boy experienced and also foreshadows what is to come next. If you add the letter “s” to “weep” the word becomes “sweep”. Repeating the words “weep, weep, weep” almost sounds like a chorus of a song or maybe even the raising of an alarm. We know the child was small, otherwise he would not have been able to clean chimneys, but it is possible also that the child was so young that he couldn’t even pronounce the word “sweep” correctly and instead pronounced it “weep” which would account for the poet’s use of the words “scarcely cry” (2) and “tongue” (3). We get the impression that th...

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...18), are all metaphors for what their life should be, not what they have been condemned to. In waking, Tom finds comfort in his dream and is finally at peace with his forced existence. “And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark, /And got with our bags & our brushes to work” (21-22). Reality has returned, the dark is back but a newfound acceptance and hope has replaced the despair. “Tom was happy & warm; / So if all do their duty they need not fear harm”, (23-24). These lines infer that there is still hope that society will see the error of their ways and put an end to their suffering and if not, they will be released to a better place in death. Society will someday realize that what they robbed these children of was immoral and wrong and they will stop the injustice and put an end to child labor.

Works Cited

Blake, William. The Chimney Sweeper. 1789. Web.