The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake

“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

The final stanza begins as the speaker wanders through the “midnight streets” (13). The purpose of the dark choice of diction is to further illuminate the death surrounding the people of London. Furthermore, the speaker hears a “youthful Harlot’s curse” (14). By considering the word choice of “youthful” it reveals that prostitution was beginning at a very young age, according to Blake, a time in life when people were supposed to be innocent (14). This choice of diction illuminates that the loss of innocence early leads to trials throughout one’s life. In continuation, the connotation of the word “Harlot” is harsh, which parallels with the treatment of prostitutes (14). Finally, the prostitute curses their baby by bringing him/her into this world. This point is continued in the next line as the speaker witnesses an “infant’s tear” (15). The baby represents the beginning of the cycle. The tears the baby cries are essentially marks foreshadowing a short life of darkness and despair. A life that is supposed to be innocent is marked with experience, conveying this cycle of darkness is everlasting. The poem concludes with the oxymoronic phrase, “marriage-hearse.” Marriage is connected with unity and children, while a hearse is the vehicle of death. By joining these two ideas Blake elucidates how people in oppressed circumstances believe

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.

     Blake also uses startling irony in this poem. This irony shocks the reader into realization of how terrible life is for these small boys. Some of the verbal irony Blake uses lies in the first stanza. The poetic voice claims that “[his] father sold [him] while yet [his] tongue/ Could scarcely cry ‘ ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!’'; (554). These words have a double meaning. They can mean that the speaker was not yet over mourning for his mother, or they can mean that he was so young that he was not yet able to sound out the s sound properly. In this case, he would stand on the corner and, instead of repeating the word sweep in an attempt at getting someone to hire him, he would repeat the word “‘weep!’'; (554). Another, more startling irony is that these young children hoped and lived for death because only in the after life could they become children. Blake emphasizes this with the

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

In lines three and four, the author begins to point out the visual evidences of society's spiritual malaise. Blake uses the word "mark" several times to show the reader the problems he sees have outward signs--"marks of weakness, marks of woe." In stanza two, Blake leaves the visible evidence for the audible evidence, and we begin to hear the groans of a fallen world. Man and infant cry--one in experience, one in innocence--yet, both in a fallen world, both raising a pained voice. From line three on, the poem is filled with mournful, weary, destructive sounds--the pounding out of the "mind-forg'd manacles"; the sad "'weep! 'weep!" of the chimney-sweeper (Blake 33); the dying soldier's sigh; the harlot's explosive, withering curse. All of these sounds contribute to the picture of society reeling in the deadly stages of metastasizing cancer.

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

In “The Little Boy Lost,” a child cannot find his father, and he feels great sadness. The time of day of the piece enhances the melancholy mood: “The night was dark, no father was there” (Blake 5). The darkness of the night mimics the boy’s sadness, as darkness is typically associated with despair and isolation. The setting of “The Little Boy Lost” also heightens the feeling of misery: “The child was wet with dew; / The mire was deep, and the child did weep” (Blake 6-7). The dew and the mire are both humid, muggy, and wet places, and these are used to represent the child’s tears.

In the 1789 poem of "The Chimney Sweeper" Blake says how children were forced to work as chimney cleaners, and how there can be accidents when they clean. For example, in this poem a child name Tom is crying because his head had "curled like a lambs back". While his friend tries to calm him down by telling him, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bore, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair". Another

     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 end of the eighteenth century was a dangerous time to be a child living in England; common folk everywhere were struggling to get by. Parents could not afford to feed and care for their children, so mothers and fathers had no choice but to sell their sons and daughters. Unfortunately, the career that children were forced into was chimney sweeping, which had a terrifyingly high mortality rate. The poem, “The Chimney Sweeper”, written by William Blake, tells the heartbreaking story of a child who is sold into chimney sweeping at a young age and leads a devastating life. After reading Blake’s poem about the sweepers, one may begin to wonder how it was possible for children to be treated so poorly, and how the king of that time could allow conditions for his people to get so bad. Thomas Paine shared his opinion on the caste system in his work Rights of Man. Paine explains that there are plenty of people that have lived undesirable lives for the king who are not acknowledged in politics, like the common folk who have been let down by the flawed caste system, including the chimney sweepers and other laborers. Because of the immense inequality taking place during this time, simply through birthrights, it becomes an important topic to focus in on. The works of Blake and Paine together give the audiences a new point of view on England’s political system at the end of the eighteenth century. These works protest the push away from the establishment and a push towards representing

William Blake masterfully uses many literary devices to portray the hopeless life of a young chimney sweep in his poem “The Chimney Sweeper”. The poem has a young, nameless first person narrator which gives the poem a sense of youthful innocence and anonymity that is in direct contradiction to the horrible conditions they suffer. Most of the poem has dark tones that is punctuated by a happy dream of freedom and joy with his true father his creator. The poem ends with a bleak and almost sinister twist of irony that leaves the reader feeling sorrow and shame for the chimney

This poem consists of a community of poor chimney sweepers, the narrator of this poem being one of the many sweepers. This poem begins with the unfortunate events of the narrator himself and his description of how he came to be one of the chimney sweepers. Through the use of perfect language, Blake is able to capture the event and all of its emotion. The narrator starts by saying, “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me…” Instantly, the readers feel sympathy for the narrator, knowing his childhood has not been the kindest. The almost perfect word choice allows readers to seep into the mind of the narrator as he continues his story. He says, “So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep” (Blake 706). In the next stanza, the narrator describes a fellow chimney sweeper, Tom Dacre, and his heavenly dream.

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.

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.