William Blake Ap Prompts

“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

Not only do these poems share differences through the speakers childhood, but also through the tones of the works.

William Blake's The Chimney Sweeper, written in 1789, tells the story of what happened to many young boys during this time period. Often, boys as young as four and five were sold for the soul purpose of cleaning chimneys because of their small size. These children were exploited and lived a meager existence that was socially acceptable at the time. Blake voices the evils of this acceptance through point of view, symbolism, and his startling irony.

William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” in his Songs of Innocence is a literary masterpiece that is still relevant and impactful in the modern world. In lovely form and description, Blake explains the atrocities and hardships of the Industrial Age in a poem suitable for school-age children and with the beautiful simplicity that only a writer like Blake could produce. The Songs of Innocence is a look into the purity and wonderful outlook on life that children usually have. While in its counterpart, the Songs of Experience, Blake uses adults as protagonist. The Songs of Experience is a look at the effects that hardships and failures have on adults, therefore having a pessimistic outlook toward life. In his these two works, Blake produces a parallel universe between childhood and adulthood where the optimism of dreams of childhood and the bitterness and stagnation of adulthood never seem to know one another.

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.

The poem “A Poison Tree” by William Blake and the story “The Cast of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe are similar in three ways. The narrators want revenge on someone who has made them upset.

Comparison/Contrast Essay The Chimney Sweepers (Songs of Innocence/Songs of Experience) are both poems about young children who clean chimneys. The two poems while seemingly similar, are different in some ways. Songs of Innocence starts with a very dark tone, but in the beginning of the fourth stanza there is a tone change from dark to rescue/religion.

William Blake's poem "The Chimney Sweeper" gives us a look into the unfortunate lives of 18th century London boys whose primary job was to clear chimneys of the soot that accumulated on its interior; boys that were named "climbing boys" or "chimney sweepers." Blake, a professional engraver, wrote this poem (aabb rhyme), in the voice of a young boy, an uneducated chimney sweeper. This speaker is obviously a persona, a fictitious character created by Blake, as it is apparent that he wasn't a child or a chimney sweeper at the time he wrote this poem.

Although there are two versions to “The Chimney Sweeper” they are different in length and the family itself. “The Chimney Sweeper” uses a very specific word choice to show the concrete imagery Blake uses. “... leaping, laughing they run” (15) and “wash in the river and shine in the sun” (16). First the reader can see that “leaping” and “laughing” is an alliteration. Secondly, Blake uses the adjectives to paint a picture that is easily imagined by the reader so he doesn't lose the reader.

The conditions of chimney sweeps were a horrible job and were often done by small children who were forced inside to clean their interiors. The poems, The Chimney Sweeper, written by William Blake describe with poetic devices how life as a chimney sweep was usually grueling work done by children who may not have known what harm could come to them. Throughout both poems, William Blake shows how young children were forced to work as chimney sweeps, yet they both use a unique style of poetic techniques, such as metaphor, rhyme pattern, repetition, multiple meaning, alliteration and point of view to establish the full effect of life as a chimney sweep. The poems are comparable in that they both have metaphors and a similar rhyme pattern.

The structure of The Chimney Sweeper in the Songs of Innocence is six quatrains of the rhyme scheme AABB – CCDD – EEFF – GGHH – IIJJ-KKLL, it is a dramatic monologue, in which the child narrates his story through the use of the personal pronoun “I” which adds a personal and genuine touch to the poem because children are incapable of lying about their feelings. Blake successfully emphasizes the innocence of a child who does not comprehend the injustice that he is experiencing. The Chimney Sweeper in the Songs of Experience is a poem of three quatrains with the rhyme scheme AABB CACA DEDE. There are two speakers in the poem, an adult speaker in the first stanza asks the boy “Where are thy father and mother?” to which the boy replies and takes over as the speaker of the poem. Blake sets up a pattern of rhyming couplets in the first stanza and then abandons the rhyme scheme altogether in the next two stanzas in order to show that the speaker in the last two stanzas is a child and using a simple rhyme scheme makes sense when a child is speaking. The sound of the poem has a sweet and innocent effect, like the narrator himself.

William Blake is a victim of being a chimney sweeper. His father sold him away when he was only 5 years old. After his father sold him he would walk along the sidewalk barely able to say sweep because of how young he was. As he got older he wrote a few poems, one of innocence and the other for experience. Reading these poems contains such imagery from the strong diction used and tone. They give such context as to what blake would see..

While Blake does make various Biblical allusions throughout his poem, such as to the Creation, he also references two of his own works. As the more well-known allusion, the reference to the “The Lamb”, a poem commonly paired with “The Tyger”, appears in a question in the fifth stanza. The narrator asks whether “he who made the Lamb”, the soft, mild creature, could “make thee”, the burning, fiery tiger (20). Though less well-known, Blake also adds a reference to one of his unfinished, mythology books, The Four Zoas. In both The Four Zoas and “The Tyger” the line “the stars threw down their spears” appears, a link which most people never notice (Nurmi). These allusions to Blake’s other works add a layer of depth to his already rich

To understand what is being said in such poems as "THE GARDEN OF LOVE" and "The Little Vagabond" one must consider the poet's religious, or shall I say spiritual, position. William Blake considered himself to be a monistic Gnostic. That is, he believed what saved a person's soul was not faith but knowledge. Faith, he felt, was a term that was abused by those who thought spending every Sunday in a church would grant them eternal salvation regardless of what actions they exhibited outside the walls of the church. Church ceremonies were also dry, emotionless and meaningless, according to Blake. Church was evil, as Blake would have put it.

Throughout his poem, he makes reference to biblical figures such as an Angel and God the Father. He uses these sacred terms to show the level of hypocrisy that was imbedded within both the Church and State at that time. For example, in lines twelve through fourteen he writes,