T.S Eliot once said, “Blake’s poetry has the unpleasantness of great poetry.” William Blake’s “great poetry” is exemplified through his poems “The Chimney Sweeper” from his book Songs of Innocence and from Songs of Experience. These two poems offer insight to the devastating quandaries of society during his time. For example, chimney sweeping became an ordinary way of life for poor young boys, as they were considered physically ideal for such work. Both poems examine the bleak existence of a chimney sweeper. The two poems side by side further enhance Blake’s portrayal of those predicaments and it illuminates the social injustice he perceived. By reading “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, Blake’s intent to …show more content…
Conditions were harsh and at times cruel for these boys. They were seldom washed and slept in cellars on bags of soot. Years of accumulated soot and grime often produced cancer, and there are instances where boys were choked and suffocated to death by dust inhalation while attempting to clean chimneys. Casualties were frequent as well; boys became stuck in narrow flues at times or fell from climbing dilapidated chimneystacks (Glynn). Blake criticizes society, and blames the parents who put their children through such misery, when he says “And my father sold me while yet my tongue/ Could scarcely cry ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (lines: 2-3). in his Innocence poem. The boys own father, who is a product of the corrupt society, is the one who succumbed his child to these hardships, and through the deliberate spelling of sweep as “’weep,” it hints to the hardships these boys encountered. The poem has a singsong read, in tone with the theme of innocence, but they did not “sing” but rather cried these chants of “’weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (3). This innocence is exploited and oppressed, and yet they are unaware of the oppression imposed on them. Through Blake’s use of these poems, he highlights the pain the chimney sweepers went through and admonishes society for …show more content…
And the awareness of the Song of Experience poem and its blatant criticism and indignation, only makes the irony of the Innocence poem more penetrable and powerful. The combination of the two can effectively do justice to the indignation Blake feels. Firstly, the rhyme scheme of AABB sets the tone of an innocent and playful persona. However once the words are read, the stark contrast of the message with the “tune” of the poem becomes strikingly obvious; the irony in this exploits it further. The lighthearted AABB rhyme scheme, illustrates a chasm between reality and childhood. Also, the line “I sweep, and in soot I sleep” (4), finalizes the infinite hell in which the children are subject to, a hell that is belied by the speaker's deceptive optimism. Blake's use of dreams as strongholds of innocence also deepens the layers of irony, the "Angel who had a bright key” (13), "green plain leaping, laughing… And was in a river, and shine in the sun" (15-16), are all farcicalities in an atmosphere of a harsh reality. While the child basks on the bright connotations of the dream, the truth remains: he is utterly alone. The “angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy/ He'd have God for his father, and never want joy" (19-20), this is deeply ironic in that his father sold him off and that the church itself has no hand in aiding these destitute children, they wouldn’t even allow them into the church. When the children
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.
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)
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 theme of authority is possibly the most important theme and the most popular theme concerning William Blake’s poetry. Blake explores authority in a variety of different ways particularly through religion, education and God. Blake was profoundly concerned with the concept of social justice. He was also profoundly a religious man. His dissenting background led him to view the power structures and legalism that surrounded religious establishments with distrust. He saw these as unwarranted controls over the freedom of the individual and contrary to the nature of a God of liberty. Figures such as the school master in the ‘schoolboy’, the parents in the ‘chimney sweeper’ poems, the guardians of the poor in the ‘Holy Thursday’, Ona’s father in ‘A Little girl lost’ and the priestly representatives of organised religion in many of the poems, are for Blake the embodiment of evil restriction.
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.
In Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789 and 1794), William Blake arouses readers' minds and leads them into a path of finding their own answers and conclusions to his poems. He sets up his poems in the first book, Songs of Innocence, with a few questions as if they were asked from a child's perspective since children are considered the closest representation of innocence in life. However, in the second book, Songs of Experience, Blake's continues to write his poems about thought-provoking concepts except the concepts happen to be a little bit more complex and relevant to experience and time than Songs of Innocence.
Throughout the Industrial Revolution in England in the 18th century, many children were forced to work against their own will, to support the growing need for labor in the demanding economy. William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper,” meticulously portrays the mindsets of two individuals obligated to carry out these societal expectations of working at a very young age. However, contrary to societies opinion on harmful child labor, Blake uses irony and sarcasm to convey his critical allegation of the wrongdoings of the church and society on their lack of effort to intervene and put an end to the detrimental job of adolescent chimney sweeping. By creating this ironic atmosphere, Blake establishes a poem that is full of despair and suffering but is sugar-coated and disguised with happiness and content provided by the church and society of London.
When Blake was inspired to write about these boys, their barbaric lives were not only common knowledge, but accepted. Throughout the passing years, however, history has lost sight of the horror they faced everyday. Therefore, familiarity with such details does help the reader to see more clearly Blake's indictment of a society that allows children to be subjected to almost unbelievable wretched conditions, and it also gives more force and point to the realism and imagery. (Nurmi, 15) History reveals that children usually began these lives at the age of 6 or 7 or even earlier. The job tormented their small bodies, leaving them to die with deformed ankles, twisted kneecaps and spines, or with "chimney sweeps cancer." The boys began their days long before sunrise until about noon when they "cried the streets" for more business. When it was time to return these young boys carried heavy bags of soot to the cellars and attics where they slept. Even the task of sleeping was torture. The boys owned nothing and were given nothing, leaving them with only the bags of soot that had swept for a bed.
The speaker in “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence is innocent blind to the facts of the world. He knows so little about the world, “And
In 1789, English poet William Blake first produced his famous poetry collection Songs of Innocence which “combines two distinct yet intimately related sequences of poems” (“Author’s Work” 1222). Throughout the years, Blake added more poems to his prominent Songs of Innocence until 1794, when he renamed it Songs of Innocence and Experience. The additional poems, called Songs of Experience, often have a direct counterpart in Blake’s original Songs of Innocence, producing pairs such as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” In Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake uses musical devices, structure, and symbolism to develop the theme that experience brings both an awareness of potential evil and a tendency that allows it to become dominant over childhood
William Blake presents two poems both titled The Chimney Sweeper, but both have a different perspective. The first poem that Blake wrote titled The Chimney Sweeper comes from Blake’s book Songs of Innocence and comes from the perspective of an innocent and ignorant mind. The second poem titled The Chimney Sweeper, was included in Blake’s book Songs of Experience and has a matured perspective. Blake utilizes both versions of The Chimney Sweeper in order to present his social critique of society. I believe that William Blake’s Songs of Experience version of The Chimney Sweeper presents social criticism better than Songs of Innocence version of The Chimney Sweeper because Songs of Experience articulates an outspoken and direct criticism of child labour while Songs of Innocence criticism is more implicit.
One way that Blake manifests the theme of a man being corrupted though experience is with imagery. For instance, in “The Echoing Green,” Blake creates imagery that portrays children playing “on the echoing green” with their families “sitting under the oak” (10, 13). The imagery paints a picture of a perfect
“The Chimney Sweeper” is a great title for Blake’s poem. The title is a symbol representing the harsh life of a chimney sweeper and his life as a child. He states, “When my mother died I was very young, and my father sold me while yet my tongue”, (ln 1-2). This is saying that his mother died when he was young and his father gave him up. Blake’s unhappiness resembles being mortal in a sense that his unhappiness is like being dead. Blake has two meanings when he says, “So your chimney’s I sweep, and in soot I sleep”, (ln 4). This line denotes that he is an adult now with the responsibility of being a chimney sweeper. Blake is really saying that his childhood was terrible like the work of a chimney sweeper.
At its fundamental level, adulthood is simply the end of childhood, and the two stages are, by all accounts, drastically different. In the major works of poetry by William Blake and William Wordsworth, the dynamic between these two phases of life is analyzed and articulated. In both Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience and many of Wordsworth’s works, childhood is portrayed as a superior state of mental capacity and freedom. The two poets echo one another in asserting that the individual’s progression into adulthood diminishes this childhood voice. In essence, both poets demonstrate an adoration for the vision possessed by a child, and an aversion to the mental state of adulthood.
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.