Essay About Chimney Sweeper And William Blake

“chimney Sweeper” Analysis Essay“The Chimney Sweeper” Analysis EssayDuring the Industrial Revolution (1760-1820), children workers, usually from the low and middle class, were a subject that society grew accustomed to over time. These children lived painful lives, both physically and emotionally, and endured horrible working conditions, including heavy machinery operation and polluted environments. A portion of these children were used for sweeping chimneys because of their size and flexibility, however they would get burned by the soot while cleaning. To address the theme of absence of innocence and the darkness it brought to sweepers, William Blake writes the poem “The Chimney Sweeper”. To express this theme, Blake juxtaposes motifs of light and darkness to expose the sweepers’ loss of innocence, creates imagery to illustrate the reality and the fantasies that the sweepers live in, and integrates Christian allusions and symbolism to emphasize the freedom that the sweepers desire.

Blake uses juxtaposition of motifs of light and darkness to emphasize the sweepers’ loss of innocence. When the author’s persona, the sweeper sold by his father, tries calming Tom Dacre after his hair is shaved, the “white hair” and the “soot”, are placed close together (Blake.8). In this example of Juxtaposition, the light of Tom Dacre’s white hair and the darkness of the soot from the chimneys contradictively collogate. This darkness conquers the white hair’s light when shaved, creating the effect of loss of innocence due to the comparison made to a lamb’s back, which is a symbol for innocence. Another example of juxtaposition can be seen with the “bright key” being carried by the angel and “the coffins” (Blake.13-14). The bright key can be seen as an item of light that sets the children free, while the coffins symbolize confinement and death which counter each other, thus, creating juxtaposed motifs. These juxtapositions from “The Chimney Sweeper” infer that the innocence and childhood are being extracted from the chimney sweepers left only with pain and sorrowful darkness that they dreamed to escape from.

To further emphasize the sweepers’ loss of innocence and its darkness, Blake creates imagery that allows us to see through the childrens’ eyes and experience their sorrowful lives. He describes the setting and horrible conditions live through that create images that give us a feeling of both pity and warmth. One example of imagery in the poem is when the cries of agony can be heard coming from the future sweeper who is sold by his father and “scarcely cries ‘weep! (Blake.3). This example of imagery sets a setting of physical and mental suffering in which you can picture a baby crying while being sold to a sweep. Blake shows similar representation when the chimney sweepers run down a “green” field and

cough is thrown.

The first page of the next poem is a short narrative featuring the protagonist in mourning in that all the children in the same line are affected by it. This page is used as one of a couple of illustrations that is used by Blake to illustrate the two main themes through which the poem is told: the need for compassion, and the need to not kill or destroy each other. Although Blake does not describe the first line of this novel’s narrative in a way that directly parallels a poem like The Lion and the Rose, his depiction of his protagonist as the tragic, sorrowful child with whom he is trying to find respite—even when he has lost it—can often be seen as showing an emotional state between some children:

The one girl. The one boy. The one…a red-stained-fingered-headed man.

The same feeling that is felt throughout the whole poem.

I want to know what she thinks, what her feelings are, and why she

is so upset about it. The one who

has given up the pain of death to do it

for the sake of other children.

She cannot be anything but

a woman who lies to her

and gives herself away for this woman

she is…a girl who is dying to find

one who will listen to

she who is not for nothing.

The same feeling that is felt throughout Blake’s work is mirrored with others, and the imagery as a whole. Consider what was shown in the first line of the first poem, in which the despair of one of the children is shared at the slaughter of its mothers by an adult, and how it plays as a backdrop for the same emotion you will find in Blake’s work as well.

In the second line of the poem, there are children who have lost and killed their mothers, but still continue to be in the womb and do not grow up. Perhaps it is something in the “life-size dolls” for them, so as to fit with the themes of despair and loss seen throughout Blake’s work that defines it. In the three scenes we get to see the cry that our family is having now, we are reminded that the grief of that family and all other family members and friends is still felt. We see that their bodies are still rotting in the mud and we see that they’re still being killed. And of course we still feel that a family, such as this, must make use of the cry: if our thoughts are to survive, we must have every family or loved one in need. So, despite that many tears

of grief

of loss…our bodies are still living.