“The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake” In William Blake’s poem, the reader will read about the first person point of view of a child going through a neglected life of child labour and slavery. In the poem, “The Chimney Sweeper”, Blake’s use of onomatopoeia conveys the emotions of the character in the poem. William Blake uses symbolism in his poem which gives the reader a better understanding of the message he is trying to convey. As well, Blake’s use of colors and adjectives provides the reader contrast between innocence, freedom and death. William Blake puts all these factors together in his poem to show how devastating it can be to lose your innocence at such a young age, the ignorance of society towards child labour and how …show more content…
For example, in the third stanza Blake writes “Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black” (Blake 12). The color black can represent several different things, it puts the read under the impression that the children in the poem are in a dark place and it also shows the reader that the only way for the children to escape their misery is death. That being said, it is shown in the fourth stanza
Furthermore, Blake juxtaposes this to Tom’s dreams, where “down a green plain leaping, laughing they run” (14), where the connotations of the colour “green” conveys a sense of happiness and joy that is stereotypically associated with the connotations of childhood. However, the children eventually “rose in the dark” (21), where the noun “dark” indicates their gloomy reality. Therefore, Blake presents irony in that fact the magic of childhood as been destroyed and corrupted, ultimately highlighting the injustice that these children did not get to lead the lives that children should. In a like manner, Owen similarly employs juxtaposition to convey iron through the title of his poem itself, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”. There is a contrast between
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.
In the book, Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caufield, the main character is a negatively charged person, doesn't want himself or others around him to grow up, and suffers from depression because of his brothers death. This is obviously Holden's way of alienating the entire world and delaying the consequences of facing reality. Alienation is a big theme in Catcher In The Rye, and something that Holden depends on most often.
major factor in his detachment from society. Of course, he does it to himself, and
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
Throughout the poems, us the readers, visualized the different techniques William Blake uses. As well as how different and similar both of them are. The Chimney Sweeper, in my opinion, talks about how the parents of a child don’t really want him or her in their lives because of how they are trying to get rid of them. Yet on the second poem, Blake went straight to the point by not using many stanzas. He uses several types of figurative language that guide us through both of the poems. Which made them sound more interesting and understandable to the readers.
can be when they are sent away from their families to work at a very
William Blake, now one of the most famous Romantic poets of the era, was given nearly no recognition for his influential works during his lifetime. He strove to break free from the pattern of thoughts that defined common experience, and this was ever present in his works of literature. Perhaps his most renowned pieces were his two collections of poems titled Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, which illustrated the progression of man from childhood to adulthood, and demonstrated how the unpleasantries of life brings about the maturation from childhood to adulthood, and greatly affect how people view the world. In Songs of Innocence, the series that Blake wrote when he was young, he suggests that by recapturing the wonderment of childhood,
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.
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.
In both of William Blake’s poems, “The Little Black Boy” and “The Chimney Sweeper,” an innocent-eye point of view portrays the stresses of society in an alternative way to an adult’s understanding. The innocent perspective redirects focus onto what society has become and how lacking each narrator is in the eyes of the predominant white culture. Each naïve speaker also creates an alternate scenario that presents a vision of what their skewed version of life should be like, showing how much their unfortunate youth alters their reality. From the viewpoint of children, Blake’s poems highlight the unhealthy thoughts or conditions in their lives and how unfortunate they were to be the wrong race or class level. These narrators were cheap laborers and were in no control of how society degraded them. Such usage of a child’s perspective offers important insight into the lives of these poor children and raises awareness for the horrible conditions children faced in the London labor force prior to any labor laws. The children of the time had no voice or platform on which to express their opinions on their conditions. Blake targets society’s lack of mindfulness towards the children using the innocent-eye point of view and illusions of what they dream for in life.
“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
In this quote the “coffins of black'; symbolize the chimneys (554). Ultimately this all symbolizes the boys’ death because of their terrible life cleaning chimneys at such a young age. In the next stanza an Angel comes “And he opened the coffins and set them all free,'; which symbolizes the boys’ death and escape to heaven. All of these symbols cause feelings of sympathy in the reader, hopefully causing them to want to help these children escape their fate.
Some of William Blake’s poetry is categorized into collections called Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake explores almost opposite opinions about creation in his poems “The Lamb” and “The Tiger.” While the overarching concept is the same in both, he uses different subjects to portray different sides of creation; however, in the Innocence and Experience versions of “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake uses some of the same words, rhyme schemes, and characters to talk about a single subject in opposite tones.
Both “The Chimney Sweepers” poems were written during the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution families were living in poverty, and times were challenging. Often times for families to survive they would sell their children to master sweeps, or master sweeps would welcome orphans and homeless children into the industry of menial labour. They used children between the ages of five to ten depending on their size. Parents would often sell their children younger, because their small frames were more desirable. Even though “The Chimney Sweeper” (1789) and “The Chimney Sweeper” (1794) were written five years apart they show many similarities and differences.