William Blake 's Inscription On The Young Chimney Sweepers

Challenges are a part of everyday life.They’re inevitable and without them life is meaningless. “Chimney sweep” both Experience and Innocence are both a similar in tone by the author’s use of defeatist diction. Even though they have a similar tone, they have different experiences of their childhood.

William Blake uses the children in both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience to represent the effects of the by-products left by a society dominated by the concept of providing for an upper class through the notions associated with proto-capitalism. This essay will highlight the various ways in how Blake presents both the physical and psychological effects caused by these by-products (poverty and suffering) to these children and how they as a whole represent this side of society that is affected therefore as a result conveying the ways in which Blake represents poverty and suffering in both of his books.

Work was ploughing the fields or picking grapes; work was long hours in dark and dirty factories, where you had to yield to the authority of other men. Work was tiring and it was joyless. It was coming home with joints aching, with rough hands covered in grease and dirty. Work was toil. The working men and women of his household, his parents and siblings, came home depleted; dripping in sweat, smelling of grease, of glues and rubber. Work was what men did, had to do to look after their families. He knew that those wealthy enough to be educated did other work – they were doctors or lawyers or engineers and he imagined that their work was easier, that they derived some pleasure from it, but that was not the kind of work that he would ever do, maybe his children, his children’s

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

Blake says another line,”The mind-forged manacles I hear/How the chimney-sweeper’s cry” The first line was broad and didn’t go into much detail. In the other lines he tells us some problems that are faced. In this line he talks about how the people have chained their feelings and thoughts thus having no views and just following the society or the majority of the people.

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.

William Blake was an 18th century poet, who lived in London during the industrial revolution. His views on human nature was profoundly influenced by his environment, on the macroscale the industrial revolution provided great leaps of progress for mankind. However on the microscale, people suffered harsh working conditions for low wages, and the cities were polluted where the streets were covered with a black layer of pollutants. Blake’s poetry was separated into two books, the “Songs of Innocence” focused on the purity and benevolence of mankind, while the “Songs of Experience” focused on the harsh reality and cruelty of the world. “The CLOD & the PEBBLE” is categorized into the “Songs of Experience” and unlike many of of the other poems, doesn’t have a corresponding poem in the “Songs

In “The Chimney Sweeper” William Blake draws out the image of life as a literal chimney sweeper in London during the late eighteenth century. Blake explains the struggles of a young boy who has to endure the painful lifestyle after his mother passed and his father sold him to the sweeping business. After reading the poem once through, techniques such as rhyme and diction stand out, but a close reading of the poem shows the central issue Blake is trying to address in “The Chimney Sweeper”: inequality. The figurative language used in the poem emphasizes the justice he wants served when referring to the harsh conditions of child labor.

In William Blake’s poem Songs of Innocence, he addresses the issue of child labor in London, and how it damages their innocence and health. Like the corruption in London at the time, the children’s essence is being corrupted by the lies they are being told to get them to do their duties. Blake writes about a little boy, Tom Dacre, who is new to chimney sweeping, and allows the audience to see what an innocent child is like before his innocence decomposes. Blake uses innocent Tom Dacre in this poem to amplify his fight against child labor in London, and show society, how it causes children’s lives and innocence to decay. Although a minor character, Tom Dacre undergoes a major evolution in only 24 lines, that represents the sad evolution that many children in his position experience.

Chimney sweeps in the old United Kingdom used to be teams of young boys sold into the profession usually to settle a debt and without work regulations; these children would suffer harsh conditions with seemingly no end in sight, minus the permanent solution. It is this struggle we can peer into when reading William Blake’s poem, “The Chimney Sweeper.” A young boy shows his hope for brighter days through

Compare and Contrast William Blake's The Chimney-Sweeper, Holy Thursday (Innocence) and London I am going to compare and contrast three of William Blake poems, where he shows his feelings about the way people treat children: The Chimney-Sweeper, Holy Thursday (Innocence) and London. The Chimney-Sweeper is about a child who sweeps chimneys. William Blake sets this poem in the winter.

In the first two lines, Blakes told the reader about an anguished child whom saying that his ‘ Father sold’ him when he was young but could not able to cry “weep”! 'Weep !' is the child's attempt at saying 'sweep!', which was the chimney sweepers street cry. Through these lines, it shows that the children are very optimistic on life and do not fear death. Blake used the word “ very young” is seen to be less effective than saying the exact age. Here, meaning that Blake told the reader from his perspective and do not want Chimney Sweeper look like he wants sympathy from people. Besides, Blake portrays to us how the children feel and reflect on the society and their morals during that time. The sweeper never feel sorry for himself. This is much contradict with how he feels about “Tom Dacre” or the beauty if his hair and the reference to the 'lambs back'. The lamb itself symbolizes innocence which is an interesting word used by

In 1817 a report from the parliamentary committee on the employment of child sweeps - also known as ‘climbing boys’- declared that there were children as young as four years old working arduous hours in chimneys barely seven inches wide. Due to familial poverty, children were sold by their parents or recruited from workhouses. Parents would often lie about the age of their child in an effort to sell them to master-sweeps. To increase speed the master sweep would employ physical punishment; pins and lighted straw were ‘forced into their feet’ by the boy climbing behind them. As a result of being shut up in an enclosed space for six hours or more and being required to carry bags of soot weighing up to 30lbs many of the boys suffered ‘deformity of the spine, legs and arms’ (Aspinall, 1959, pp. 742-45) or contracted testicular cancer.

“The Chimney Sweeper” is a poem written by William Blake (1757 –1827). His main aim is to expose the social defects in his age and the vices which afflict his society and to confront his readers with the dreadful suffering of the working paupers. According to Blake, the chimney-sweeping life is not a life at all; the labourer children have lost their childhood, their freedom, and their innocence. He criticizes the victimisation of children and the injustice of this oppressive labour. He shows how Tom; the chimney sweeper and other children suffer from long hard labour in addition to physical and psychological abuse. Blake insists that these children are living in abject and inhumane conditions of deprivation, misery and humiliation

In 1794 William Blake’s work was known and published as a collection of poems that were put together as one book called Songs of innocence & Songs of Experience. In the collection Blake titles a poem, “The Chimney Sweeper”, and this one is viewed in two ways: Innocence and experience. In the book of innocence Blake shows how poor innocent children are being abused and mistreated during this time era. In Songs of innocence, “The Chimney Sweeper,” is about the way childhood youth is destroyed, taken away or ruined by selfish mean-spirited adults. Innocence to Blake was in a way not even in existence. He always believed that the world of one’s