William Blake 's The Chimney

“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

"All things truly wicked start from an innocence,” states Ernest Hemingway on his view of innocence. Innocence, what every youth possesses, is more accurately described as a state of unknowing but not ignorance- which connotation suggests a blissfully positive view of the world. Most youth are protected from the harsh realities of the adult world. Therefore they are able to maintain their state of innocence. While innocence normally wanes over time, sometimes innocence can be abruptly taken away. Some of the characters in Truman Capotes In Cold Blood lost their innocence due to the traumatic events they experienced in childhood and adulthood while some had none to begin with.

The lost of innocence can totally change the way people view the world. A person who illustrates this can be found in J.D. Salinger’s novel, the Catcher in the Rye. The story happened during the 1950s, in a small town in Pennsylvania called Agerstown. A teenage boy named Holden, who witnesses the death of his older brother Allie when he was only 13 years old. Then consequently, he blames himself all his life for the death of Allie. As time went by he starts to search for a sense of innocence that was lost in the beginning of the novel. Throughout the course of the novel, the author conveys that Holden is continually stuck in between childhood and adulthood. The author uses Holden’s struggle to convey that in reality often times people who

To value innocence is to value ignorance because the loss of innocence reveals the realities of society.

It is commonly said that "Ignorance is bliss”. As one grows older, they have their innocence Louis taken away. They learn about how life really is and why it is tough. These realizations shape that person into a knowledgeable adult. However, losing one's innocence is not always a positive influence.

Benjamin Alire Saenz in his novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of The Universe, John Knowles in his novel A Separate Peace, and Sarah Ladipo Manyika in her article “Coming of Age In The Time Of The Hoodie”, demonstrate that coming of age involves a loss of innocence.

In many ways, people lose their innocence. The novel, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton’s main characters are the Socs and the Greasers. The novel shows us a lot of examples of loss of innocence between them. Also in the song, “Nothing Gold” by Stevie Wonder described the sense of innocence pretty well. In the novel and the song, we can find a lot of examples of loss of innocence which is shown through losing someone or something so special and problems people have to face.

Innocence is a state of being that in life could be chosen to be given away or take away, and many things are symbols of the people have. An example is mockingbirds in Harper Lee's novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee parallels the killing of mockingbirds to the persecution of Tom Robinson, the prejudice of Arthur-Boo-Radley, and the coming-of-age of Jem Finch to symbolize the destruction of innocence. Tom Robinson's parallel to a mockingbird is in the same way as a person being guilty of something they didn't do. At the end of it all, Tom is shot while he was trying to run away or escape.

     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 Cry of the Children” and stories, poems and other works were a direct response to the lack of standardized child labor laws and, or the enforcement of existing laws and regulations related to this issue to protect the safety and welfare of child laborers. Although the English Parliament passed the Chimney Sweepers Act in 1788, it wasn’t until the Factories Regulation Act of 1833 that finally sparked a significant point in taking this issue seriously. From the late eighteenth century the employment of children in mines and factories neglected child workers safety and the conditions of employment would be strongly debated for many years after. In 1833, the Report on the Employment of Children in Factories had led to the Factory Act of 1833

Innocence may be preserved in a child indefinitely. However, influences from both family and society impose standards of maturity on children which gradually strip the youthfulness away from a child. Additionally, children may isolate themselves or face ostracization, which leads to the degradation of a child’s purity as he begins creating his own unique worldview apart of his community.

In William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence, Blake depicts a child who was sold into the work force by his widower father. The child is so young, in fact, he cannot correctly pronounce ‘sweep’, instead crying “weep weep weep…” (3). The child, the perceived speaker of the piece, describes to the audience a fellow chimney sweeper named Tom Dacre. Tom has a

     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 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

The first stanzas of both poems establish that the children have been forsaken by their parents and were left in the role of a chimney sweeper. The Innocence poem’s rhyme scheme consists of two couplets per quatrain. The couplets create a sound similar to nursery rhymes (which often mask dark events, like the Black plague). The Experience poem begins with rhyming couplets in a quatrain, but switches to ABAB rhymes in the second stanza. Some of the end rhymes are just barely off, which causes a slight feeling of uneasiness.