Diction and Imagery in Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper”
Children are now welcomed to earth as presents bundled in pinks and blues. In the 1800’s children were treated as workers straight from the womb. Children trained early in age to perform unbearable tasks (Ward 3). Imagine how it felt to be unwanted by a parent and sold to a master who also cared nothing about them. Many children earned a few pennies by becoming chimney sweeps or working in the streets running errands, calling cabs, sweeping roads, selling toys or flowers and helping the market porters (Ward 3). The young children did not have much choice on which job (life) they wanted, but by far sweeping chimneys was the most dangerous. The children were forced into confined areas filled with comb webs, where they sacrificed their lives to clean. William Blake does a great job depicting hardship of children in the 1800’s in “The Chimney Sweeper” through the use of diction and imagery.
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)
A name is given in the second stanza “Tom Dacre” used to show the realism of the event described in the poem. The second stanza contains the only simile in this poem, “That curl’d like a lamb’s back”(6), symbolizing the lamb as innocence and when they shave the child’s head it’s like they are taking the innocence away from the child.
For the first time in history children were an important factor of the economic system, but at a terrible price. The master of the factories employed children for two reasons. One, because of their small body which can get inside the machines to clean it and use their nimble fingers. Second, the masters use to pay low wages to the children who could be easily manipulated. The average age for the parents to send their children to work was ten. Although, Conventional wisdom dictates that the age at which children started work was connected to the poverty of the family. Griffith presents two autobiographies to put across her point. Autobiography of Edward Davis who lacked even the basic necessities of life because of his father’s heavy drinking habit and was forced to join work at a small age of six, whereas the memoir of Richard Boswell tells the opposite. He was raised up in an affluent family who studied in a boarding school. He was taken out of school at the age of thirteen to become a draper’s apprentice. The author goes further and places child employees into three groups, according to the kind of jobs that were available in their neighbourhood. First group composed of children living in rural areas with no domestic industry to work in. Therefore, the average of a child to work in rural area was ten. Before that, farmers use to assign small jobs to the children such as scaring birds, keeping sheep
With the gradual advancements of society in the 1800’s came new conflicts to face. England, the leading country of technology at the time, seemed to be in good economic standing as it profited from such products the industrial revolution brought. This meant the need for workers increased which produced jobs but often resulted in the mistreatment of its laborers. Unfortunately the victims targeted were kids that were deprived of a happy childhood. A testimony by a sub-commissioner of mines in 1842 titled Women Miners in the English Coal Pits and The Sadler Report (1832), an interview of various kids, shows the deplorable conditions these kids were forced to face.
In the agricultural industry the children would harvest crops and sewing. If the children were working in the mining industry it was very dangerous. The conditions were very poor, it was very dirty and not pleasant. The boys were called “Breaker Boys” they broke down raw coal into different pieces for certain furnaces. The coal bearers would carry coal on their shoulders, and the smallest children worked as trappers, they would open trap doors in the mines to move the coal. As for the manufacturing industry, the children would work in dark and dirty conditions. They worked around sharp tools and and machines, which caused a lot of injuries to them.
From childhood he was unlike those around him. He went to school to study art and found his love of poetry. From his early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions. He spoke of seeing God and the Angels. He married his with Catherine Boucher in 1782. His brother, Robert died, but this is where Blake got a lot of inspiration for his work. In 1789 Blake wrote and illustrated the popular Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in 1794. His poetry was extremely non-conformist and focused on imagination, rather than reason. Both works have many common parallels and themes. His poetry also deals with the common aspect of a romanticism work; it has moments of sin, suffering and salvation. In Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper, it is a heartbreaking poem about the young children that were forced into doing labor as chimneysweepers. Mostly because they were the only ones small enough to fit in the spaces and they were sold into that work. It was damaging and cruel how they treated these children and Blake writes about it in such a powerful way. In the first stanza alone the reader learns about the difficult life and the suffering this child has had to overcome, “When my mother died when I was young, my father sold me while yet my tongue…so, your Chimney’s I sweep and in soot I sleep.” (Songs of Innocence) This poor child is portrayed so innocently and gentle, yet leads this suffering unfortunate life. People treated
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.
“Child labor is work that harms children or keeps them from attending school.” Back then in the U.S., children were working between ages 5 to 17. Between the 1800s and 1900s, many children worked in agricultural fields, fishing, mining, manufacturing, and even drug trade and prostitution. Even though child labor laws are still avoided around the world, the effects on child labor in the US, before, was unbelieveable. Children were suffering from health issues, reform movements grew and other countries followed enforced child labor too.
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.
The first stanza begins by telling the background of the chimney sweeper, or climbing boys as they were called. "When my mother died I was very young, [a]nd my father sold me..." (Blake lines 1-2). Once the boy's mother died his father sold him into an apprenticeship. It is here where Blake introduces his first instance of good and evil. Here the mother is seen as the "good". Muriel Mellown of the Literary Reference Center states that "His mother—always inIt can be inferred that the young sweeper loved his mother and was hurt emotionally over her death. The father on the other hand is seen as the "evil". Muriel Mellown states that "... sold as an apprentice by his father, the stern figure of authority..." (Mellown 3). This was quite normal for this time period considering that the man of the household was supposed to work while the woman took care of the house. However, it can be inferred that the narrator looks at him as a demonic man who does not care for him.
The children work in various conditions, suffering numerous injuries. In boot factories, children are forced to sit so close together that they poke each other with needles: “many have lost an eye in this way” (595). The children work “unreasonably long hours” (595). Chimney sweepers in particular work long hours, starting at about four a.m. and working for twelve hours. These chimney sweepers sleep in bags of soot, wrapping themselves in the bags and straw. They are subjected to suffocating steam, heat, flying hot metal, and the “unhealthiest kind of grinding known” (595). Those who are employed in mills endure lung problems, scrofula, mesenteric diseases and asthma.
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.
The entire poem uses images to enlighten its meaning. For example, in lines 2-3, "Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless naked piping loud..." Blake writes in such a way that allows the reader to see the change that takes place, when a baby enters this world. The poem reveals that it is not a pleasant and peaceful entrance, but an unkind and dishonest world that the innocent is forced to come into. Also, lines 5-6, "Struggling in my fathers hands: Striving against my swaddling bands..." give the reader vivid images. In these lines, the reader can see the baby squirming and trying to move in the tightly wrapped blanket. This shows how the baby will have to go through many struggles in life and the parents will try to protect the child and try to hold the child back from all the harms and troubles that he or she might have to go through.
Things like chores should be very trivial compared to the hardships and tasks the subjects of William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” face. “When my mother died I was very young,” and here you stand complaining about the dishes? Also, when the main subject says, “And my father sold me while yet my tongue,/ Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.” really puts life into perspective.
Stanza three explains what life was like at the farm he lived on, as the previous stanzas have. Line twenty describes the landscape and how beautiful it is. It describes it as Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air,” (20). Lines twenty one through twenty three use more imagery to describe the landscape. They use words such as “lovely and watery” (21) to show how pleasant it was to gaze upon the land. The word “And” is also repeated in the beginning of each of these lines which creates suspense. They also show repetition by repeating words such as “green” and it brings up the starry night again. Line twenty four talks about owls and how they are starting to come out. The day is starting to end and there is still beauty in everything. Now night has begun and all the things that made the day happy and carefree are starting to disappear. Lines twenty five through twenty seven use imagery to show that the moon is appearing and the horses and everything else is disappearing into the night. This begins to show that the youth the speaker is experiencing is starting to
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.... ... middle of paper ... ...
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 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 that his life is about to change dramatically for the worse.