William Blake's Mind-Forg D Manacles

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William Blake viewed English society as being bound with “mind-forg’d manacles” (London 2:4), the limits or social norms keeping us from being totally free, demonstrating Blake’s disapproval of England’s societal structure. In fact, Blake saw many problems within English society such as the power of the church, child labor, and monarchical structure. Moreover, Blake’s view was so profoundly negative that he looked at the French Revolution as the start of a new world. The French Revolution’s act of taking down the monarchical structure represented an apocalyptic event washing away those “mind-forg’d manacles”. Blake’s view of the French Revolution came from a belief that the structuralized religion of the Europe monarchical system took away …show more content…

For example, the innocence version of the poem “Holy Thursday” paints a good image, “innocence faces clean” (19:1), of poor kids being guided into St. Pauls’ Cathedral by older men, “grey headed beadles” (19:3). The horrible circumstances of their lives are conveyed through Blake making it an anomaly that their faces were clean. In doing so, Blake shows the church shielding the public from the reality of how miserable these kids’ lives are and will end up being. Therefore, the kids’ struggle is seen as being taking care by the church in a saint like fashion rather than seeing reality; these kids will continue living these horrible lives under the authority of the church. Moreover, the church isn’t helping these kids out of the goodness of their hearts; there helping out of obligation to the structure of the church. Blake conveys this in the last line, “Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door” (19:12) showing the reason the church’s helping these kids isn’t morality instead its an obligation to the religious structure of their society. After all, these kids could be “angels”. It’s not enough that their human to get help; the possibility of being mythological figures represented in their religion had to be there. The church views these kids as a group of subjects that can be exploited to progress further in England’s structured

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