Chimney Sweeper Essay

encouragement to a new chimney sweeper, and their hopeful beliefs. Tom Dacre dreams that the chimney sweepers are “locked up in coffins of black” (line 12) and have been happily set free by angels; ironically, the sweepers are joyful that they have freed oppression and gone to heaven. Children should not dream about death at such a young age. Blake emphasizes the insensitive society that would victimize children and allow them to feel this way. In order to comfort a new sweeper into a lifestyle of devastation

industries, while children living in the city “sold matches and swept street crossings”. Child labor was not new, but as industrialization grew it became more prominent, as tattered children crowded the streets. The working conditions in coal mines and chimney sweeps were dangerous in numerous ways. For example the darkness in the mines sometimes caused “permanent sight problems” due to constantly straining the eyes (Garlitz 67). Many children worked endless hours under dreadful circumstances. Unsuccessful

metaphor which exposes the church is present in the lines―”How the chimney sweeper cry” (line 9), “Every blackning Chruch appalls” (line 10). In Blake’s time, chimney sweepers were primarily young children who were wards of the church. Consequently, the blackning Chruch is representative of the corruption present in the church due to their involvement in the exploitation of these children. Just as black soot covers the chimney sweepers, the church is metaphorically blackning for its mistreatment of

William Blake is an author best known for the ballads he has composed in one of his books The Songs of Innocence and Experience, this includes “The Chimney Sweeper.” During the Fifteenth Century, people built fires daily in order to cook food and keep warm. This causes a build up of soot and ash within chimneys. These chimneys were often cleaned by children small enough to fit down inside the narrow brick structures. The problems that arose from kids doing this have a wide range of undesirable effects

William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” greatly mimics the mere thought of innocence. He wants to show the brutality of child labor and the loss of innocence it causes. This poem reflects the workforce for children and the controversial issues it causes, such as: harmful work environment, extinction of a childhood, and the complete loss of innocence. The poem uses many contrasts to show the purity of childhood and the brutalities of the work force. Along with that, the boy dreams of being pure and

Loss of Innocence At the first glance at the poem, The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake, it seems to be about the mistreatment of children, owever, after more in depth reading it proves to show much more than that. Blake’s poem is about loss of innocence, death, exploitation, and oppression for unwanted children (Heath, S, 2011). By cleverly describing the deplorable livings conditions, the horrible treatment, the dreams of a better life with a father who loves them and the fear of an inevitable

naïve sanguinity to pretentious nihilism as the individual gains experience and “wisdom.” The question is then presented: are children truly senseless, or are we simply breeding generations of heartless adults? Together, William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” poems, as well as William Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven”, isolate and exemplify this archetype to construct a reality more true than either poem alone, that a child’s mind is the most pure and untarnished form of humanity, indirectly criticizing

my tongue Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of

Additionally, Blake uses imagery to set the scene of what life is like of the children during the Industrial Revolution. The imagery in this poem makes the whole thing come alive nevertheless, the poem seems more like a reality. The imagery presents what the children are thinking of and processing while they are mistreated. The way Blake wrote this poem sets an indescribable image to readers. Such as, “There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, / That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved;”

both of the poems it talks about how the children feel towards them cleaning the chimneys. Also how they can not do anything about it other than doing the work. The difference is that in one of the poems it says how one of the children's sees into heaven, and in the other poem the children says how there is no heaven. 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