Children in Blake’s Poetry Essay

His language makes it easy to imagine the son leaving home and the way the father is reacting to this day finally coming. People reading can see the son packing his shirts and looking for his keys as the father screams. It’s easy to envision the boy sitting on his “Baba’s” lap waiting and the silence he gets in return. The visual use of language makes the poem more emotional and real; being able to picture the characters makes them more three dimensional and relatable to all whom read this poem. The father screaming as his son gets ready to go off into adulthood gives readers the image of a man's world falling apart, the father knew that this day would come but when it actually did, it broke him. “‘Are you a god' the man screams, 'that I sit mute before you? Am I a god that I should never disappoint?'” Lee’s words give off the picture of the desperate and overwhelming love that a parent can have for their child. “Please, Baba, a story? It is an emotional rather than logical equation, an earthly rather than heavenly one,” This sentence makes the poem so much more emotional, the language used implies that the son isn’t just asking for a story, he’s asking for his father’s affection, for his father to sit with him and make him laugh, keep him entertained. That’s all he wants and the line “an earthly rather than heavenly one” implies that the father knows his son isn’t

Persona is an important concept in these poems. "The Lamb" could be read as a nursery rhyme to little children. The persona of this poem is one of a little child talking to a lamb. The persona of "The Lamb" is shown in line seventeen, "I a child, and thou a lamb." The persona helps Blake to show that God made such a harmless creature like the lamb and such a pure child. The reader knows that God made both these creatures because the line "Little Lamb, who made thee?"(Blake 538) is repeated throughout the poem. The child is a symbol of purity so that is why Blake chose to use a child as the persona rather than a grown up. The child is describing to the lamb who made him: We know this because in the second

The most leading literary device used in Blake’s poems is symbolism. In this particular poem, “The Lamb” is a reference to God himself. This is because of the trinity that is involved with being a Christ follower. The trinity is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The child in the poem, is a symbol as innocence and purity just like Jesus Christ. Christians are to “receive the kingdom of God like a child” (Luke 18:17, ESV). This means that we are to have child-like faith, and trust in God, just like children do in their parents.

As the story quotes, " 'Mother, what are you doing?' he asked. 'Do not worry, my son,' she answered gently. 'I am just marking the was so you will not get lost returning to the village.' " This quote generally means that the mother and son are very close and they both share a very detailed relationship. The feelings the story bring to the characters is showing how much the characters love and care for each other. But some others characters show different emotions like the young lord, he was very mean and treated most people with no respect. An example would be when the story quotes, " 'Fools!' the lord cried angrily. 'What good is your wisdom if you cannot help me now?' ". This quote shows how the young lord did not have confidence in his wise

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.

The first extreme in Blake’s Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience is innocence. The Songs of Innocence is comprised of poems of young children who have a naïve perspective of the world around them. In The Lamb, the young child is compared to a untainted lamb who has not been corrupted by the world. In The Chimney Sweepers the orphaned child is sold to be a chimneysweeper. The child clearly has no hope for any future, however the naïve child listens to the voice of the angel and makes peace with his situation. He blindly accepts the comfort without coming to the recognition that he will ultimately die. In The Little Black Boy, the child doesn’t recognize the prevalent racism of his time. He believes that he and the white child can sit together in the light of G-d and together they will be like innocent sheep. These children encounter

white men were enemies and that he had to stick to his own blood. He was used to his

She helps her son financially, and therefore does not try to be more accepting, even though he asks her to be. She tries to give the black child a penny, and thus thinks that she is indeed acting more accommodating to race, but succeeds only in drawing attention to her antiquated notions of gentility. Thus the angelic description of her physical features is very ironic. Heavenly, and Christian images are seen throughout this short story, such as Julian being described as St. Sebastian, and Julian’s mother reminding him that Julian’s grandmother was a “Godhigh.” Perhaps the images foreshadow the upcoming death of Julian’s mother, and her belief that she absolutely deserves to go to heaven when she dies, though she does not know she will die by the end of the story. Julian’s mother believes she has done everything right in her life, and though she is a very earnest and selfless woman, she is hardly an angel.

To begin, loved ones will put each other before themselves in difficult situations. Mccarthy explains a night on the road as the father speaks to his son about how how he will always protect him and care for him. The fact that the father told his son he was “appointed by god” (McCarthy, 77) to protect him symbolizes that the father is his sons god on earth. His father will always protect him and do what is best for him. The fact that the father alluded to god when he was talking to his son reassured the child that nothing bad will happen to him. Also, the repetition of the words, “we will always be” (77), shows how the father makes sure that his son is confident in the fact that they are the “good guys” (77), This portrays a

Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and

William Blake thought the role of the child to be innocence. Witnessing two of his

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are collections of poems that utilize the imagery, instruction, and lives of children to make a larger social commentary. The use of child-centered themes in the two books allowed Blake to make a crucial commentary on his political and moral surroundings with deceptively simplistic and readable poetry. Utilizing these themes Blake criticized the church, attacking the hypocritical clergy and pointing out the ironies and cruelties found within the doctrines of organized religion. He wrote about the horrific working conditions of children as a means to magnify the inequality between the poor working class and

The poem begins with the question, "Little Lamb, who made thee?" The speaker, a child, asks the lamb about its origins: how it came into being, how it acquired its particular manner of feeding, its "clothing" of wool, its "tender voice." In the next stanza, the speaker attempts a riddling answer to his own question: the lamb was made by one who "calls himself a Lamb," one who resembles in his gentleness both the child and the lamb. The poem ends with the child bestowing a blessing on the lamb.

William Blake is one of England’s most famous literary figures. He is remembered and admired for his skill as a painter, engraver, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757 to a poor Hosier’s family living in or around London. Being of a poor family, Blake received little in the way of comfort or education while growing up. Amazingly, he did not attend school for very long and dropped out shortly after learning to read and write so that he could work in his father’s shop. The life of a hosier however was not the right path for Blake as he exhibited early on a skill for reading and drawing. Blake’s skill for reading can be seen in his understanding for and use of works such as the Bible and Greek classic literature.

Nature was a theme factoring in many of his works and Blake associates nature with different elements in these poems and we find that nature is seen in communion with God in the introductory poem and throughout these poems Blake points out the relationship and harmony between Man and Nature, children and Nature and he also talks about sex in Nature in `The Blossom'.