Similarities And Differences Between The Chimney Sweeper And The Chimney Sweeper

As Wendy Martin says “the poem leaves the reader with painful impression of a woman in her mid-fifties, who having lost her domestic comforts is left to struggle with despair. Although her loss is mitigated by the promise of the greater rewards of heaven, the experience is deeply tragic.” (75)

“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

“Steam rising from ovens and showers like mist across a swampland” has a double meaning, steam rises from ovens and showers, but also in summer, as it rains on a hot highway, steam rises. It is comparing the lives of the people living in these houses to the disorder of a swampland by using the simile “like mist across a swampland”. It may also be suggesting that as cities expand, more land is being stolen from nature. The last line of this stanza “The cricket sound of voices and cutlery” is appealing to the reader’s sense of sound, indicating that the people on the highway can hear the noise of the people in the houses. It is likening the noises of the people to noises made in nature by crickets. In the next stanza Foulcher has written, “Only the children remain outside”, which informs the reader of what it is now like, with all of the adults gone inside. He describes the children as, “bruised with dirt and school”, this gives the indication they are both covered in patches of dirt, and bruised, which are similar colours. Also informs that they are relaxing by play after a hard day at school.

On page 76 the entirety of the stanza is a happy tone of nostalgia. The whole stanza is the child remembering his life as a wonderful time filled with imagination and freedom. He is reminding the reader of how amazing his life was compared to his life now. Collins utilizes this tone to really ingrain in the reader that the kids younger life really was fantastic, and it sets of the reader to for a more dismal feeling when the next stanza comes around. This stanza is so exciting and it gets the reader to remember the extravagant stories they used to imagine with utter joy. This happiness is directly contrasted by the rest of the poem. Collins does a great job of distracting the reader and makes them almost forget about the sadness they read in the previous stanza so they get hit really hard with the sadness again. this is exactly how the child feels about growing up. In the final stanza the child says, “This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.” (76). The child recognizes that he must grow up and let go of what he used to hold dear at younger ages. The boys feeling are expressed as laborious and distressed, the boy clearly does not want to grow up, yet he is extremely saddened by the fact that he has to. The reader shares the kids feeling of sadness because like

The second stanza is almost like the first in the fact that it appeals to the same senses. It talks about the actions and the feelings of the child. It describes how the child would wake and wait for his father to call him. The second stanza also describes the mood of the house in the line, "fearing the chronic angers of that house." Perhaps that line is

(Beginning sentence).In the passage, it says“And the cat and -Old Billy-ah but the world was a lonely thing. So wide so empty.And so bare, so bitter bare”. This shows that the boy thought the world was so bare and so lonely. Also, it states,“A harsher shriller not struck in as if many other ruder voices; above it flew first sweet music that made him creep closer”. This explains how he was interested in the different types of music. Lastly, it states “Hoarse staccato cries and peals of laughter shook the old hut, and as the boy stood there peering through the black trees, abruptly the door

In the poem the speaker tells us about how his father woke up early on Sundays and warmed the house so his family can wake up comfortably. We are also told that as he would dress up and head down stairs he feared ¨the chronic angers of that house¨, which can be some sort of quarrel between his father and his mother in the house. This can also lead the reader to believe that the father may have had been a hard dad to deal with. However the father would polish his son's shoes with his cracked hands that ached. This shows the love that the father had for his son and now that the son has grown he realizes what his father did for him. The sons morals and feelings have changed him because as he has grown to become a man he has learned the true meaning of love is being there for one's family and not expecting it to be more than what it is. Consequently this teaches him a lesson on how much his father loved him and how much he regrets not telling him thank

Symbolisation is also used to counteract the miserable life of an Australian housewife. This can be seen in the line “She practises a fugue, though it can matter to no one now if she plays well or not, (stanza one, line one).” This line suggests that the woman portrayed is a musician. The poem latter reads, “Once she played for Rubinstein, who yawned,” (stanza one, line nine). This suggests she was talented enough to present to Rubenstein but didn’t succeed. “The children caper, round a sprung mousetrap where a mouse lies dead.” This line symbolizes the housewife. Her dreams of becoming a musician are trapped within her own environment. This same line can also evaluate the difficulties and harshness of the urban Australian life. Seeming sad this is something that is exciting to the children.

She sent her child to sing in the choir, in hopes she would be safe in God’s tabernacle, but instead, the child went to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church death trap. Secondly, I disagree with the way Dudley Randall ended the poem. Even though the reader can assume what happened to the child, the poem slightly leaves you with a cliffhanger. The child’s lifeless body cannot be found by her desperate and destitute mother. The audience can be left feeling melancholy and incomplete. Lastly, Randall, in my opinion, strategically wrote stanza five in the poem very well,“She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, And bathed rose petal sweet, And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, And white shoes on her feet”(Randall 19). Lastly, the white gloves and white shoes represent purity and innocence of the adolescent. The way the little girl brushes her black hair and bathes in sweet aromas represents the child’s vulnerability and how sweet the little things are in life.

William Blake's The Chimney Sweeper, written in 1789, tells the story of what happened to many young boys during this time period. Often, boys as young as four and five were sold for the soul purpose of cleaning chimneys because of their small size. These children were exploited and lived a meager existence that was socially acceptable at the time. Blake voices the evils of this acceptance through point of view, symbolism, and his startling irony.

The Chimney Sweepers was published in 1789 and 1794. William Blake was the author of both poems that are named the same thing but are honestly completely different.

The author shows us how both poems are alike by describing the character’s emotions. In both poems it shows us how they were miserable. In "The Chimney Sweeper" (from songs of Innocence) it says "There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, that curled like a lamb's back, was shaved”, and in "The Chimney Sweeper" (from songs of Experience) it also says "A little black thing among the snow, crying "weep!' weep!" in notes of woe!", in both poems letting us know how they both felt dejected but in different ways.

“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

Ground-breaking, momentous, and a time of great struggle, the Industrial Revolution was famous for its innovations and infamous for the sobering reality it inflicted upon the standard family. Mid-18th century Britain brought poverty to everyday urban workers. With it, came an increase in child labor like never seen before. In order for a normal family to survive in the urban lifestyle, all members of a family had to work. This included children as young as four years to work as chimney sweepers, miners, and most popularized in 18th century Britain, factory workers. By the year 1800, children under the age of 14 in Britain’s factories accounted for 50% of the labor force (“Industrial Revolution, Child Labor”). Though the number continued to grow, all did not go unaccounted for. Romanticism, an effort opposite the movement, gave recognition to the emotional conflicts overlooked. Romanticism shed light on the daily struggles of the everyday man, woman, and the most neglected up until that period of time, the child. Throughout history, others have written about childhood, but Romantic poets began to question what it meant to be a child. The question, though not answered directly, later became revealed in their works where it exposed their belief systems. The role of the child in British Romantic Poetry represents the early life of Romantic poets, and the qualities they possessed in childhood.

The children are the ‘we’ of the first half of the poem. They “loved it” (5) when the mother kicked out their father and were “glad” (1) at the result of divorce. When their father lost his job they “grinned” (4) and were “tickled” (line 7) with pleasure as they watched their father’s world crash down around him. The sympathy conveyed through the narrative sits with the mother and children during the first half of the poem. As the daughter begins to speak in present terms, and the “you” (1,3) suddenly is now “father” (17), the poem undertakes a dramatic shift. Sympathy begins to surface, from the reader, for the “bums in doorways” (18) who begin to take on a victimized persona with their hands depicted as useless “flippers” (21) attached to their “slug” (19) bodies. It is not to say that the speaker has forgotten the cruel insensitive man that she recalls in the first part of the poem, but the father is now not the only villain and the mother and children are not the only sufferers.