In Many Ways, Poetry Has The Ability To Shape The Minds

Set in the times of the Industrial Revolution, Blake’s The Chimney Sweeper is a powerful attempt to fight one of the biggest social injustices at the time: child labour. He illustrates the heartbreaking life story of thousands of kids through two different points of view, one is exposed in the poem pertaining to Songs of Innocence (1789) and the other one is exposed in Songs of Experience (1794). Both poems share the same outline; however, it is the narrator’s view the one that changes drastically between the poems. In the eldest version, the reader is presented with a young chimney sweeper full of hope and aspiration whereas in the most recent poem the author reflected a slightly more experienced child that does not believe in the system anymore. The maturity expressed by the last chimney sweeper is not only seen in his ideals but the whole poem is a 180 degrees deflection from the 1789 version.

William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” in his Songs of Innocence is a literary masterpiece that is still relevant and impactful in the modern world. In lovely form and description, Blake explains the atrocities and hardships of the Industrial Age in a poem suitable for school-age children and with the beautiful simplicity that only a writer like Blake could produce. The Songs of Innocence is a look into the purity and wonderful outlook on life that children usually have. While in its counterpart, the Songs of Experience, Blake uses adults as protagonist. The Songs of Experience is a look at the effects that hardships and failures have on adults, therefore having a pessimistic outlook toward life. In his these two works, Blake produces a parallel universe between childhood and adulthood where the optimism of dreams of childhood and the bitterness and stagnation of adulthood never seem to know one another.

The narrator speaks of what could symbolise the lower or working class "the Chimney-sweeper", crying out against the system, and the upper class "Church" subduing them. Both the chimney and church are personified to symbolise the people they represent. This dominance is also related in the personification of "Soldier" and "Palace". The soldiers fight the wars that the monarchy decides, their blood on the King and Queen's hands. They sigh as to their shared plight, but their sighs only end in their deaths. This stanza's rhythm is different in that it follows a heptameter meter. Its pace is faster, which might reflect an increase in excitement by the narrator in what might be anger.

The poem "The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake is all about exploitation, oppression, and abuse of young naive boys. The sweeps are innocent victims of the cruelest exploitation. Their lives are restricted. The imagery the speaker uses show the awful conditions in which the children were working in. The first stanza, the speaker in the poem introduces himself by saying that he lost his mother and his father sold him in a very young age. "And my father sold me while yet my tongue/ Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" (3-4). The word "weep" can be interpreted in different ways. It can be used as an abbreviation for "sweep", or more deeply as a cry for

At the beginning of the poem, Blake is describing a young boy’s harsh childhood. The speaker’s mother was killed when he was not even old enough to talk. After that his father sold him to be chimney sweeper. His mother’s death seemed to be the turning point. It caused every aspect of his life to go downhill. He went from being an innocent little boy who had loving parents, to a nasty, orphaned chimney sweeper. Through the poem the young boy’s innocence was overruled and forgotten when they became chimney sweepers.

How would we do a poetry explication on “The Chimney Sweeper” (from songs of experience) by William Blake? We would start by analyzing “The Chimney Sweeper” and breaking it down into our own meaning or interpretation. In “The Chimney Sweeper” there are two speakers the child who is found in the snow and the person that finds him.

The "Chimney Sweep" poems of Experience and Innocence are different and similar in tone all threw out the poems in many ways. From the way the kids are feeling, to the way the author describes the way the characters act in the poem.

This poem implies that it could possibly be Satan. The “distant deeps” and “burnt the fire of thine eyes” suggest its creation in hell. The mystery behind Blake’s poem is left to the interpretation of the reader. Another poem from Songs of Experience is Infant Sorrow. This poem represents childbirth, and the pain associated with it. In addition, it signifies the uncertainty the child feels entering into unknown surroundings. The baby is swaddled and placed into the arms of what he feels is a stranger (his father) and laid upon his mother’s breast to sooth him. Blake’s analysis of childbirth allows the reader to experience the possible perspective of an infant as it enters the world. Blake’s unique way of writing challenges his readers to analyze each poem wondering if their interpretations are correct. Finally, years later, Blake wrote another rendition of The Chimney Sweeper. This time the child is considered experienced. The child, no longer innocent, understands his hopeless situation. He realizes his parents have purposely surrendered him to a life of despair. The child speaks the truth without any dreams or thoughts of rescue. Blake depicts the child’s senseless pain and suffering, in hopes of helping to eradicate child labor. Most of these poems mentioned from the Songs of Experience, are free from imaginary dreams and happy endings. Blake wanted his readers to connect with both the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. These poems, although different,

In conclusion it is evident that Blake is writing this poem to bring to light a major calamity in England. The practice of young boys being forced to work and live in these types of conditions is appalling. Many western world nations passed child labor laws during the 19th century. Blake’s poem about the life of a child having to work and live in these types of conditions probably helped people understand the need for these types of laws. Reading Blake’s detailed poem about children who were chimney sweepers, leads one to believe that perhaps Blake may have had some personal experience as a chimney sweeper

The Chimney Sweeper reflects the hope that God can give to people even when they are miserable and hopeless. The kid in the poem is sold at a very young age and he is devastated with the things he is forced to do, but his perspective changes once he sees his future.

Chimney Sweeper from Song of Innocence is an example by noticing that there is a young work force, where these children need to be small in order to fit down the chimney and are sold by their families. There crying of “weep, weep” is a sound device of romantic irony, Song of Experience, The Chimney Sweeper also talks about the “notes of woe”. Along with social class of these little children working this dangerous job in order to sustain some sort of income since they were of the lower class. Religion is being called upon with the character Tom Dacre, a new member of the sweepers. In lines thirteen and fourteen, “And by came an Angel who has a bright key, and he open’d the coffins & set them all free” this emphasizing that if you do your work that is given to you then you will be sent to heaven and be rewarded. Blake was anti-Christianity so he was going against this norm of religion

In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the two poems “The Chimney Sweeper” highlight  the injustice during Blake’s time such as: poverty, child labour, and abuse. “The Chimney Sweeper” illustrates William Blake's understanding of 'innocence' and 'experience' by exposing the hypocritical nature of authority during the 1700s. This essay will begin with explaining Blake’s concept of ‘innocence’ and ‘experience’.

Blake uses the aspects of religion, light versus dark imagery, and the usage of the chimney sweeper itself to convey the similarities and differences of the figure in both poems. The

The structure of The Chimney Sweeper in the Songs of Innocence is six quatrains of the rhyme scheme AABB – CCDD – EEFF – GGHH – IIJJ-KKLL, it is a dramatic monologue, in which the child narrates his story through the use of the personal pronoun “I” which adds a personal and genuine touch to the poem because children are incapable of lying about their feelings. Blake successfully emphasizes the innocence of a child who does not comprehend the injustice that he is experiencing. The Chimney Sweeper in the Songs of Experience is a poem of three quatrains with the rhyme scheme AABB CACA DEDE. There are two speakers in the poem, an adult speaker in the first stanza asks the boy “Where are thy father and mother?” to which the boy replies and takes over as the speaker of the poem. Blake sets up a pattern of rhyming couplets in the first stanza and then abandons the rhyme scheme altogether in the next two stanzas in order to show that the speaker in the last two stanzas is a child and using a simple rhyme scheme makes sense when a child is speaking. The sound of the poem has a sweet and innocent effect, like the narrator himself.

Both ‘A Poison Tree’ and ‘The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)’ present nature in contrasting ways, which, at first, may confuse the reader as to what Blake’s true thoughts on his modern views of nature are. However, one needs only realise that, within ‘A Poison Tree’, Blake shows the poetic voice to be part of the human mind, to tell, by basing an opinion from his Romantic views, that he generally perceived the human mind to be corrupt. The tree, a key part both in ‘A Poison Tree’ and, commonly, in portrayal of nature, has been presented in such a way that it’s purity seems falsified, tarnished, and this may be seen as Blake’s way of showing how nature could only be tainted when thought of by man. This is a drastic change to the message regarding the natural world in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’, in which the speaker is assumed to be a child. Children, in Blake’s eyes, had only hope when mixed with the apparent cruelty of the adult world. Proof of this may be found within the dreams of little Tom Dacre, a chimney sweep