Theme Of The Chimney Sweeper

Cummings and Pablo Neruda present the theme of their poems by having their two speakers addressing the women they love. The two speakers cope with the idea of prospective change in two completely different ways: Cummings’s speaker faces the end of his relationship as a situation that hurts him but in the end he accepts it, while Neruda’s speaker doesn’t care about his lover’s past as the only thing he wants is to make a couple with her. Thus, there are both similarities and differences in the poetic devices used in the two poems, while the tone of the speakers’ voice differs too, as in the first poem is sad and melancholic whereas in the second poem is confident and

“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.

‘Prayer before Birth’ is a dark and disturbing poem written from the point of view of the unborn child who is preaching to God that when he is born, hoping he is not affected by the horrors of society. Macneice 's negative views towards current society are shown through the fetus’ spiteful thoughts; in the fifth stanza, Macneice lists how the unborn child wants to avoid ‘bureaucrats’ hectoring him, avoid being laughed at ‘by lovers’ and not be frowned at by ‘mountains’-this portrays how paranoid the fetus is. Not only is he worried about being judged by ordinary people, but also the landscape surrounding him. The influence of nature will affect his unspoilt unborn form, but he should not be looking at it pessimistically. One of the most powerful effects used by Macneice is the repetition of the phrase ‘I am not born yet.’ This emphasises the fact that he has not yet

The last line in the poem “and since they were not the ones dead, turned to their own affairs” lacks the emotions the reader would expect a person to feel after a death of a close family member. But instead, it carries a neutral tone which implies that death doesn’t even matter anymore because it happened too often that the value of life became really low, these people are too poor so in order to survive, they must move on so that their lives can continue. A horrible sensory image was presented in the poem when the “saw leaped out at the boy’s hand” and is continued throughout the poem when “the boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh…the hand was gone already…and that ended it”, this shows emphasis to the numbness the child felt. The poem continues with the same cold tone without any expression of emotion or feelings included except for pain, which emphasizes the lack of sympathy given. Not only did the death of this child placed no effect on anyone in the society but he was also immediately forgotten as he has left nothing special enough behind for people to remember him, so “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This proves that life still carries on the same way whether he is present or not, as he is insignificant and that his death

It also shows a shift from the present situation to a future one then back to the present. In the beginning of the poem the son is currently waiting for his father to tell him a story and has a sense of eagerness to him while the father has a sense of tiredness to him. This scene is depicted as the father being “in a room full of books in a world of stories,” (6-7) yet the father has difficult trying to come up with a story to tell despite how many are around home. The room that they are in is described as having books of stories inside of it and outside of the room is the whole world that is full of stories to tell. At this point the problem is that the father cannot think of a story to tell his son who asked him to tell him a new story which, according to the father, seems to be the beginning of the end. The father believes that since he is not able to tell stories as quickly and easily as he could before then one day soon, “the boy will give up on his father,” (8-9). These thoughts help to prepare and give background to the glimpse into the future when the boy is getting ready to leave his father by packing his clothes and having his keys ready to go. Since the father saw the day he would lose his son to manhood, once the day actually came the father seemed very upset at the boy but not for leaving but more so for the reasons that he is. The father yells at the son, “Are you a god...that I sit mute before you? Am I a god that I should never disappoint,” (16-18). It seems that the father and son have had an argument or disagreement and the son did not want to deal with all the problems that had grown to be too much for him so he chooses to not say anything to his father at all as he is getting ready to leave. The father calls him out on this and claims that he is imperfect and will disappoint

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.

Never mind it, for when your head’s bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair” (line 6-8). Also in the fifth stanza Tom describes his dream. “Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind; And the angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father, and never want joy” (line 21-24). He dreams that after chimney sweepers die they go on to see God and live happily. The children just have to pay the price on earth before they have happiness, but they were all very hopeful. However, the children’s mood changes completely in Songs of Experience. “And because I am happy and sing, They think they have done me no injury” (line 9-10). The children are becoming more and more bitter. All their hope is being lost overtime. Now the children don’t think they have a plan for the future. This lifestyle has had a major impact on their life. Being chimney sweepers, being tormented and having to endure terrible conditions.

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.

“Ink smeared like bird prints in snow” is the first simile that appears in the poem and serves multiple purposes. The most obvious one is the creation of imagery, where it compares the black words the persona writes on paper to the bird’s foot prints that are left behind when a bird walks on snow. The imagery alludes that the persona will leave a “footprint” in the form of a note that people can use to trace her path but she will never be there anymore. From line thirty-six to forty, the poet creates another imagery of a sparrow (a tiny and a delicate bird) flying in windy snowing weather. The sparrow is dizzied and sullied by the violent wind; it encounters a lot of difficulties and fear. In this imagery, the persona compares herself with the delicate bird. She compares the challenges that the sparrow goes through to the suffering she encounters relating to her parents.

The mother of the boy in the novel had given up all faith of God saving her; she ends her life with suicide. Before she does she states:” I don’t dream at all…I am done with my own whorish heart and I have for a long time….As for me my only is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart”(57). The mothers’ views on God is not understood, but this extract clearly shows at one time she had hope in her

After going through the few stands left at the bazaar, the boy became quite enraged. He felt that everyone including God was holding him back from his dreams and desires. As he was “[gazing] up into darkness [he] saw [himself] as creature driven and derided by vanity; and [his] eyes burned with anguish and anger”(Joyce 5). The boy tries very hard to keep faith in God that one day he will bring his true love to him but as he keeps failing, that boy gets angrier. The boy keeps breaking the social norm specific to his society of being religious more and more because he believes that God is not helping him. He believes this because he thinks that God is supposed to help achieve all desires but God is not helping him right now. This leads him to believe that there is no God if he is not with his one and only true love. The boy used to be hopeful and positive thinking one day he will be united with his true love. But as time goes on and he is still alone, this leads the boy to actually mature and realize that he is worth nothing in the world. He starts to think he is just “creature driven and derided by vanity” and he has no worth. After many disappointments in the boy’s life he has just given up and accepted that he is worth nothing. Part of growing up is learning that in the real world, one is worth nothing. Life does have any special plans for anyone in life. This ideal was created because of the modernist

This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.

Again, the author selects a new set of imagery, such as stars, moon, sun, ocean, and wood to remind of the heaven in which the speaker used to live, and then to sweep it off right away. The last statement “For nothing now can ever come to any good” (16) finally reinforces the speaker’s loss and unhappiness. In loneliness, the speaker’s love becomes fiercer and more truthful. It is the fierceness and truthfulness that lead the speaker to the last stair of hopelessness. The end of the poem is also the hopeless end of the speaker’s life because of “nothing …good.”

“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

The speaker in Innocence is a chimney sweeper, but the poem doe snot focus on him–it focuses on “little Tom Dacre” and his dream (Innocence, 5). Before it was shaved off, Tom had white hair “that curled like a lamb’s back” (Innocence, 6). The color white and lambs are symbolic of innocence and purity; even though his hair is shaved away, the goodness is still right below the surface. The subject of Experience is in stark contrast to Tom Dacre. The speaker of the poem is someone who is talking to the child, and they do not describe the chimney sweeper like a person. Instead, he is called “a little black thing” sitting in the snow (Experience, 1). Snow may be white like Tom Dacre’s hair, but it is also stark and inhospitable: it serves to make the soot-covered child stand out. Like Tom, this child was prepared to become a chimney sweeper; his parents dressed him in “the clothes of death” and taught him “to sing the notes of woe” (Experience, 7-8).