Analysis Of The Poem ' The Chimney Sweeper '

“The Chimney Sweeper” (128): This version of the Chimney Sweeper is very upfront and saddening. The version that is presented in the songs of innocence is much more of a calm town and is not as straightforward, while this version is very short and to the point. In this version its very deep as the narrator basically just calls out the parents/church for doing these horrible things to the children. I really love all three stanzas of this poem because they all have a really deep meaning and Blake transitions through them very well. Reading this poem over and over I don’t know what to make of it other than it is an absolute horrible situation. I think it can be tied in to

Out in the yard of an old married couple, there grew a peach tree that flourished with fruit every year, and every year the routine was the same. When summer arrived, each day the old couple would walk outside to pick the ripest peaches on their tree. Some days, they would walk home proudly with a basket full of ripe peaches, giddy with excitement for what they might bake with their prized fruit. But every once in a while, they would come home with very few peaches, allowing them to solemnly eat their fresh fruit instead of a concocted sweet treat.

The voice in this poem is one of pure happiness and innocence. In this state of joy, the infant is unaware of the world in which he lives and that awaits him. In these opening lines, we see Blake revealing the everyday modeling and structure that categorizes the world, but is absent in the simplicity and purity of childhood. The child has no name because joy needs no other name. Labeling and classification are products of organization and arrangement that the world uses to assimilate innocence into experience. Blake demonstrates that it is through this transition, that the virtue of child’s play is destroyed. Blake utilizes specific emotions such as “happy,” “joy,” “sweet,” “pretty,” “sing,” and “smile” to describe this uncorrupted state of being. There is no danger, darkness, or struggle for the infant. Instead, he exists in a care free state, free of guilt, temptation, and darkness. The birth of a child is celebrated by Blake and it stirs in us powerful emotions of peace, love, and hope.

Both “The Chimney Sweepers” poems were written during the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution families were living in poverty, and times were challenging. Often times for families to survive they would sell their children to master sweeps, or master sweeps would welcome orphans and homeless children into the industry of menial labour. They used children between the ages of five to ten depending on their size. Parents would often sell their children younger, because their small frames were more desirable. Even though “The Chimney Sweeper” (1789) and “The Chimney Sweeper” (1794) were written five years apart they show many similarities and differences.

     Blake also uses startling irony in this poem. This irony shocks the reader into realization of how terrible life is for these small boys. Some of the verbal irony Blake uses lies in the first stanza. The poetic voice claims that “[his] father sold [him] while yet [his] tongue/ Could scarcely cry ‘ ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!’'; (554). These words have a double meaning. They can mean that the speaker was not yet over mourning for his mother, or they can mean that he was so young that he was not yet able to sound out the s sound properly. In this case, he would stand on the corner and, instead of repeating the word sweep in an attempt at getting someone to hire him, he would repeat the word “‘weep!’'; (554). Another, more startling irony is that these young children hoped and lived for death because only in the after life could they become children. Blake emphasizes this with the

As she left the burning building, five questions entered her mind; where was she, who was she, who were those people, why did they do this to her, and why couldn’t she walk?

Audre Lorde, a well-known poet, utilized her poetry to call attention over the political issues of class, feminism, sexism and racism for decades. These political issues are the symbols that transformed her into someone who is not just a woman, but a person whom clarifies these issues using poetry as a voice to define herself as a Black lesbian woman and an individual. The poem “Coal” is a poem that represents her ideals and her feelings towards being a voice among other feminists. It also shows her struggle as an individual that is caught between the issues of feminism coinciding with race, class, and sexism, which is also known as Intersectionality. Because of the attention being called from Lorde’s poetry, people should continue to recognize this political issue and utilize it to spread awareness of the prejudice and marginalization of today’s society.

During the Victorian Era in 1837 the period that was ruled by Queen Victoria I, women endured many social disadvantages by living in a world entirely dominated by men. Around that time most women had to be innocent, virtuous, dutiful and be ignorant of intellectual opinion. It was also a time associated with prudishness and repression. Their sole window on the world would, of course, be her husband. During this important era, the idea of the “Angel in the House” was developed by Coventry Patmore and used to describe the ideal women who men longed. Throughout this period, women were treated inferior to men and were destined to be the husbands “Angel in the House”.

A Youth So Old In Victorian England, child labor was a predominate practice as seen in much of the Victorian literature, like the work of Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Browning saw child labor as a social issue which resulted in her writing “The Cry of the Children.” Her poem is a call for action against child labor, which she achieves by speaking directly to her audience both as herself and as the child labor force. Browning is not the only poet to bring child labor into her work; Romantic poet William Blake also touches on the same subject with two of his poems both titled “The Chimney Sweeper” found in his Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

“Then down a green plain a leaping and laughing, they run, And wash in the river and shine in the sun. Then naked and white all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;” When Blake wrote these lines he was of course referring to the act of Baptism. Which is defined in the Bible as being a water ritual, used as a spiritual symbol. Through this process the sweeps would be washed clean of all of their sins and also be cleansed of all of the bad things in their lives including their jobs. “And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father, and never want joy.” This line of the poem indicates that if Tom was a good child and did as he was told on Earth that he would not be forsaken by God as his parents had forsaken him in his former life, but instead he would have everything he could ever possibly desire and be completely content in his afterlife. “And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm; So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.” Through these words Blake reveals hope rather than despair because the focus is on immortality instead of life as a sweep. “The little Sweep's dream has the spiritual touch peculiar to Blake's hand.... (Gilchrist).” As stated before Blake is trying to convey

“Ballad of the Landlord” is a poem by Langston Hughes that shows the struggles of a black man in a white society. There are opposing forces that make this black man suffer and he gets no retribution or any justice for the things that the people accuse him of. Through each of these voices the poem is thoroughly explained and can be analysed in such a way. The forces in this poem is the tenant, landlord, police, and the press. Each one of these forces shows the racial struggles of an innocent black man.

“The Chimney Sweeper” is a poem written by William Blake (1757 –1827). His main aim is to expose the social defects in his age and the vices which afflict his society and to confront his readers with the dreadful suffering of the working paupers. According to Blake, the chimney-sweeping life is not a life at all; the labourer children have lost their childhood, their freedom, and their innocence. He criticizes the victimisation of children and the injustice of this oppressive labour. He shows how Tom; the chimney sweeper and other children suffer from long hard labour in addition to physical and psychological abuse. Blake insists that these children are living in abject and inhumane conditions of deprivation, misery and humiliation

In both of William Blake’s poems, “The Little Black Boy” and “The Chimney Sweeper,” an innocent-eye point of view portrays the stresses of society in an alternative way to an adult’s understanding. The innocent perspective redirects focus onto what society has become and how lacking each narrator is in the eyes of the predominant white culture. Each naïve speaker also creates an alternate scenario that presents a vision of what their skewed version of life should be like, showing how much their unfortunate youth alters their reality. From the viewpoint of children, Blake’s poems highlight the unhealthy thoughts or conditions in their lives and how unfortunate they were to be the wrong race or class level. These narrators were cheap laborers and were in no control of how society degraded them. Such usage of a child’s perspective offers important insight into the lives of these poor children and raises awareness for the horrible conditions children faced in the London labor force prior to any labor laws. The children of the time had no voice or platform on which to express their opinions on their conditions. Blake targets society’s lack of mindfulness towards the children using the innocent-eye point of view and illusions of what they dream for in life.

"The Chimney Sweeper" is a quintessential Blake poem as it embodies his belief in looking towards the future for hope and comfort. Additionally, the poem is a perfect example of a child's movement from innocence to

The speaker in Innocence is a chimney sweeper, but the poem doe snot focus on him–it focuses on “little Tom Dacre” and his dream (Innocence, 5). Before it was shaved off, Tom had white hair “that curled like a lamb’s back” (Innocence, 6). The color white and lambs are symbolic of innocence and purity; even though his hair is shaved away, the goodness is still right below the surface. The subject of Experience is in stark contrast to Tom Dacre. The speaker of the poem is someone who is talking to the child, and they do not describe the chimney sweeper like a person. Instead, he is called “a little black thing” sitting in the snow (Experience, 1). Snow may be white like Tom Dacre’s hair, but it is also stark and inhospitable: it serves to make the soot-covered child stand out. Like Tom, this child was prepared to become a chimney sweeper; his parents dressed him in “the clothes of death” and taught him “to sing the notes of woe” (Experience, 7-8).