The Chimney Sweeper And The Tyger

Blake makes a reference to an angel in the first poem, line 13, “And by came an Angel who had a bright key.” Since the first letter of the word angel is capitalized, the reader can conclude that “Angel” refers to religion and God. The angel is supposed to be a messenger sent by God to the chimney sweeper. In the second poem, Blake makes an innuendo to the Bible in line 11, “And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King.” Here the reader can be assured about it dealing with the Bible since God is mentioned. The Priest represents God’s preacher while the King most likely stands for Jesus since he is the king of all Jews and of all creation. Blake used these biblical allusions in order to depict the Christian faith in his poems. He also executes it to allure the religious audience of his poems during this significant time

“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

God! A figure of love and forgiveness to many, a figure of fear to others. Pulitzer Prize winning essayist Annie Dillard illustrates the differences and similarities on how one feels about God in her essays “On a Hill Far Away” and “God in the Doorway”. Dillard explores children’s fear of God by comparing her portrayal of herself with the child on the hill, using common motifs, symbols, and differences of tone to contrast the two reactions.

Always evolving, always changing and always growing. Growing for the better or for worse? In the 18th century, Industrial advancements such as the steam engine seemed like a great idea, but as history has proved countless times, had its faults. The Industrial Revolution impacted the world in a negative way because of the loss of humanity, as seen in the Female Factory workers, Lowell Mills and Chimney Sweeps.

In the poem, the father gets up early to mend the fire place and even polished the children’s shoes. In lines three through five the boy states “then with cracked hands that ached/ from labor in the week day weather made/ banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him”. (Lines 3-5) From this statement, the boy is saying that his father does all the work, but never gets any credit. Also, the boy implies that the house scares him or what he means is his father. Back in that time when this was written, fathers did not know how to show their love. So, by taking care of the house, polishing the children’s shoes and working, is what he thought as showing love. The boy did not understand his father’s ways, yet as he got older he finally

The first stanza uses concrete imagery to depict a working man “with cracked hands that ached” (3), the speaker’s father, starting a fire. The second stanza starts with warm connotations of the fire rescuing his home from the cold; however, the stanza ends with the speaker expressing his fear, a figurative coldness, of “the chronic angers of that house” (9). The third stanza completes the epiphany that the final line of the first stanza, “No one ever thanked him” (5) hints at. It is at this point that the speaker understands that his father expresses his love differently. While the speaker was looking for an overt expression of his father’s love, his father, a working man, can only show his love with the means by which he is familiar. To the father, love is an expression of actions, actions that the speaker is oblivious to during his childhood. By the setting being early Sunday morning, it shows that the father’s actions, as a symbol of his love, are omnipresent and supersede his own desire for rest. The final lines of every stanza reflect the speaker’s growing realization that he was indeed loved by his father, that he initially didn’t recognize his father’s actions as an expression of this love, and that his obliviousness to this unfamiliar expression of love helped contribute to what

The narrator in “The Chimney Sweeper” is a young school-age boy, who never tells the reader his name, which speaks of the selflessness of child. In the first stanza, the boy tells his brief life story and about his mother’s death that leads to his father selling him into slavery. In the rest of the poem, the boy tells the reader about the brutal conditions of slavery that he and his peers must endure. Specifically, the boy tells the readers about Tom Dacre, a boy who is struggling with the misery of working endless

Although both men are both devout Christians, they have different views. For instance, William Blake wrote his poems in order to teach children the necessity of being in church and accepting Christ as a personal savior. Many of his poems stress how important it is to know God and how their faith can save them from their worries. An example of this is in the poem "The Chimney Sweeper" when the little boy had a dream about an angel setting free men that were trapped in a black coffin. Throughout his poetry, Blake uses many nouns to indicate the biblical meaning of something. For instance, in the poem "The Lamb", he uses the lamb as a metaphor for Jesus Christ to show that he too was a humble lamb. This metaphor showed that Jesus is close to us humans by using the word lamb to describe both children and Jesus Christ. However, in Wordsworth's poems, the topic of religion is seen through a more naturalistic view. In other words, William Wordsworth viewed that in order for religion to be truly appreciated it must be in nature where God truly is. This view is seen in his poem "We are Seven". The setting of the poem takes place outside of a churchyard in which the narrator and a little cottage girl are discussing her family members. Wordsworth did not use his poetry to show the importance of going to church or being a Christian like Blake did, however, he did use children to show that they are the ones closest to God. In Wordsworth's poetry, the child is what is able to be free in nature, and since nature is where God is that meant that the child was the closest to God. Not only were children used to show the importance of religion to Wordsworth but is also shown through the capitalization of some of the words throughout his poems. Words such as Boy, Girl, and Creature were all capitalized to show that God created all things, and these nouns were capitalized to show that God was

The poem is sectioned into six quatrains, which follow the following pattern: reality, reality, dream, dream, dream, and reality. Through use of this poetic device, the poet presents the impression to the reader that it is inevitable that reality must always be returned to, and that the children will have no escape from their labour. Though the dream may present the impression that it is a welcome escape, it only serves to further emphasise the cruel conditions of the child’s life. ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ falls into the category of a lyrical poem, which presents it to the reader as a song of sorts, almost akin to a nursery rhyme. Traditionally, nursery rhymes are sung to young children, emphasising the narrator’s naive tone. The irony in this must also be noted, as the child ought to be protected by his parents singing to him as he falls asleep; he should not be partaking in the dangerous occupation he has been forced

Although William Blake died almost entirely unknown, his works influenced readers long after his death because he challenged important issues, such as religion. His works Songs of Innocence and Experience demonstrated the hypocrisy and corruption of the Church and State, by showing situations seen through the eyes of those that are innocent and those that are experienced. For example, in his two poems both titled “The Chimney Sweeper”, he brings attention to the cruelty of children being sold into slavery by their parents and the ideology that allows them to do so without guilt. The poem “The Chimney Sweeper” in the Innocence collection, ends when the boy Tom was visited by an angel who promised him a place in heaven and

Children of a lower social rank were not fortunate enough to receive and education and instead were expected to learn nothing except how to master their given trade. In his poem, Blake implies that due to organized religion and society failing them, these working children were only free in their dreams. He writes about a dream in which an angel came to Tom Dacre and all the sweepers with a key and unlocked them from their black coffins. This symbolizes freeing the boys from their seven by seven holes that they were confined to each day. Once freed by the angel, the boys were no longer required to work and were free to roam and play in the fields similar to how the children of the middle and upper class had done. Enjoying their freedom, the boys, “wash in a river and shine in the Sun” ridding themselves of the soot that had become embedded in their skin as they soaked in the warmth of the sun (Blake 15-16). The angel then came to Tom and told him that “if he'd be a good boy, / He'd have God for his father & never want joy” (Blake 19-20). Tom’s dream acts as a tool for Blake to comment on the lack of involvement and help from the Church upon the failure to do their

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.

Blake’s aphorism are bold and questionable with the reason of cynical reflection. “The Little Boy Lost” shows that there is no good without evil, and vice versa. In the beginning of the poem, the boy pleads his father not to walk too quick. One can view this in common moral terms as the conscience imploring God’s navigation through the evil universe. As the poem gets deeper, the little boy is lost, left all alone in the darkness.

     William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” was mainly about the possibilities of both hope and faith. Although the poem’s connotation is that of a very dark and depressed nature, the religious imagery Blake uses indicates that the sweeps will have a brighter future in eternity.

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