The Chimney Sweeper and Blakes London, Essay Example

The Chimney Sweeper and London by William Blake

The Chimney Sweeper and London were written by William Blake during the late 1700’s when times were immersed with much political injustice in the world. There is a need for a balance of innocence and experience as addressed in the poem, The Chimney Sweeper. The young chimney sweeps are protesting the working conditions as such in the country of England during the late 1700’s. For example the young lads and lassies slept on bags of soot they had swept the previous day. They rarely bathed and their masters had so much control over them they would not help them to replace their clothing. Many were left with physical deformities and respiratory illnesses due to the long enduring hours in the chimney cellars. The most profound lyrics of the poem are the initial ones “When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry “Weep! weep! weep! weep!” So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.” ( Blake 231). This gives rise to the poor families that were so desolate the children had to go away to work in nearly as indentured slaves to keep the families alive. The next lines of the poem, “And by came an angel, who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins, and let them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run, And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.”, came to the author in a dream where he as a boy hoped all of the chimney sweeping conditions would soon be over and he could go back to his family and live free and happy again. (Blake 232).

The critics speak of a child who tells his own desolate story which inflicts so much pain that it is almost unbearable to read the poem. The little boy is very ashamed of the life he has to endure and the idea he has to shave his head off for having lice. This is a part of life and the young child could not fathom this with an emotionally undeveloped mind of a youth. Children should not have been exposed to such negligence in these days in England. There was further an alternative vision expressed in the speaker’s voice caring for the young boys. There is no doubt the poem begins with simplicity and takes off with rhyme and into verse through the third and fourth lines as the meaning of ‘weep’ and ‘sweep’ are interchangeably played together to mean ‘sorrow’ from the boys point of view. “So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm” is the rising of the boy simply saying we all need to simply get up in the morning and do what is expected of us. The job is not the one of his dreams but he is trying to attain a state of mind so that he can accomplish his daily task.

London  by William Blake is comprised of sixteen lines split into four paragraphs with a rhyming AbAb pattern throughout the entire poem. Blake describes sarcasm as he walks through the streets of London in the first opening paragraph. He repeats the word “charter’d” and stresses his anger at the political times and his feeling towards the monarchial classes with their dominating laws and oppressive means to keep the people’s opinions closed.  He scoffs in the poem to say that it is they want to control every street and by far even want to control the River Thames which is the largest river that runs through England alongside the political arena near Parliament. The poem clearly differentiates the poor and rich classes of England and how each has to live a different life. This poem is very similar to The Chimney Sweeper because the political revolution in England is what brought on the devolution of the classes and made such a wide gap in the financial classes of the people. Just as in The Chimney Sweeper there is misery on the faces of the people on the streets of London as there was misery on the faces of the boys forced to work as indentured slaves in the chimney cellars. One chilling verse in the poem is reflected as “In every cry of every man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.” (Blake 432).Though every mans thoughts are suppressed his true fears are real to him as he walks the streets of London so desolate and so wary knowing there is nothing he can do to control the situation as such. Blake refers to his poem The Chimney Sweeper in the verse “How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry  Every black’ning Church appals;  And the hapless Soldier’s sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls.” (Blake 433). He refers to the mundane authority of the church and the Queens Palace and how it is so unruly over the people. There is no democracy that exists in London. “But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot’s curse Blasts the new-born infant’s tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.” (Blake 433). This verse relates to the authority having an accusatory tone whist talking to the town’s people and the women having to prostitute themselves out at night in order to survive.

Blake uses a combination of alliteration, imagery and particular word choice to create the emotions in this poem, London. Through the use of alliteration he sets the mood for sorrow and dismay in the streets of London. He uses the words ‘every’ and ‘cry’ in the second stanza to symbolize the total depressive state that is overbearing over the entire island of London, England. There is a suggestion that the narrator is not mentally stable, himself. He uses destruction of religion through imagery. Through the chimney sweepers cries he attempts to clean the very ashes that causes the state of depression in the desolate society. The black’ning church is a representation of the loss of innocence through the society’s destruction of abandonment of religion and church because they have simply given up to the political advances of the tyranny of the Church and the Queen’s reign over them. They cannot feel any lower emotionally than they are at this particular state of time.

Works Cited

Criticism on the Chimney Speaker: Songs of Innocence [Online] Retrieved11 May 1928. 09 July 2010> http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/02/olga/blake/bookinncrit.htm

Wicksteed, J. Blake’s Innocence and Experience. London: JM Dent & Sons LTD, 1928

123helpme.com Analysis of Blake’s London [Online] Retrieved <12 March 2009.09 July 2010>http://www.123helpme.com/assets/8325.html

Meyer, Michael The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing Bedford/St.Martin 7^th edition, 2005.