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William Blake's London And Gwendolyn Brooks First Fight

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William Blake’s, London and Gwendolyn Brooks’s “First Fight. Then Fiddle” are two poems that evolve around very similar themes of war, oppression and an unheard story. In London, we have Blake expressing the infested poverty and adversity of a city and Brook is contradicting the effects of a war and art. Both poems have a basic theme behind their publication. A voice that must be heard but it’s not; to be able to restore either humanity or music. William Blake aims to make us understand the conditions that underlay the whole of London in the 1790s. The poem, London is about many discouraged citizens living in the city. It represents the whole English society during the time when the human condition was at its worst. The poem highlights the social-economic challenges that carried the order of the day as well as the major evils in the community. Blake introduces literary devices such as repetition and imagery to help the reader feel as though they were walking the streets of London. Blake makes the vibrant horrors of London very vivid in his writing which sets a very obscure and dreary tone. He describes a time when riots broke out, houses burned, and individuals’ lives were devastated. “In every voice: in every ban… How the Chimney-sweepers cry… Every blackening Church appalls… Every blackning Church appalls, ” (London, 7-10) The speaker emphasizes, on the suffering of the minorities and the ignorance the wealthy and elite display. Blake also talks about the immorality

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