The Chimney Sweeper William Blake Analysis

William Blake explores the thematic implications of industrial labour in eighteenth century London in relation to the moral ethics of responsibility pertaining specifically to child labour. In his poems, “The Chimney Sweeper” and “London”, Blake uses images of childhood anguish caused by being forced into the laboring world in order to predicate the comfort of the higher classes on the suffering of others. This pattern of images suggests that all classes of society are corrupted through industrial labour and condemns those in power who allow for the subjugation of children to continue. This can be seen through the reinforcement of the recurring images of chimney-sweepers, the predication of suffering in relation to comfort, the condemnation

This reinforced the tradition of using children as chimney-sweepers and reminds readers that the workers are young individuals being exploited by the work force. The image of the child is dehumanized in his suffering based on societal treatment that reinforces their status as lesser beings through their young and impoverished position (Benziman, 176). Blake “appropriates” the child’s voice as a means to provide an “adult” social “discourse” about the institutional neglect of chimney-sweeps and other child labourers (Benziman, 176). The child that the narrative speaker encounters is initially seen saying ‘“weep,’ ‘weep’”, which is an attempt at the chimney-sweeper’s cry to attract business, yet the omission of the phonetic “s” sound is dualistic in its poetic function (Blake, “The Chimney Sweep” 2). The sweeps inability to pronounce the first letter of the word is a common feature of disordered speech development in children thus exposing how young the child is but also showing his limited ability to express his plight (Benziman, 174). In addition the “bitter echo” of the word “weep” in the attempt to say, “sweep”, links the concept of his deep sorrow that has been caused by his labour as a chimney-sweep (Benziman, 174). In other words, the climbing boy’s agony within the

The overarching “neglect” of the impoverished members of society allowed for many people, children specifically to continue to be abused so that the wealthy “could continue profiting from their misery” (Gummeson, 34). In other words, the abuse of children is continued in order for upper class citizens to “live better lives themselves” and maintain the level of comfort that they were used to (Gummeson, 44). As a result, a society that was seen to be a growing democracy whose development had occurred over many years continued to overlook the rights of low class workers. This maintains the status of high-class individuals by allowing their perception of self to be members of an equal society while they were still able to maintain the comforts that unfair labour