The Chimney Sweeper: From Innocence to Experience

In the XVIII century the industrial revolution in England increase radic eachy the demand for work force. This situation make numerous countryside families emigrate looking for better life conditions in the industrialised cities. However; what they found was confinement inside the walls of factories where devouring(a) take iners did non wish to pay workers high wages. Children were neither big nor am culmination becoming to argue or complain and were puny enough to fit between machinery gaps where adults couldnt; moreover they were paid cheaply, and so nestlingren became nonesuch workers. Not entirely were these peasantren subjected to desire hours, scarce alike to majestic conditions. There were many accidents where children were injured or killed. The intercession in factories was often cruel and unusual; they would be beaten, verbally maltreated or subjected to different kinds of pain inflection. William Blake was aw atomic event 18 of the poverty and conqueri ng of the urban society where he spent most of his life. He had an amazing insight into contemporaneous economics and politics, and was able to lie with the effects of the authoritarianism of church mental synthesis and state. As a dilettante of his era Blake took an progressive role in expo twaddle the corruption pickings place in his society. He was inspired by the stolid treatment of upstart boys called ? lamp chimney s screams.? Thus he produced a protest with his poesy. The chimney brooms began their sidereal days long before daybreak until ab push through high noon when they shout in the streets for more work. When it was sequence to return, these new-made boys carried with child(p) bags of erotica to the cellars and attics where they slept. Even the task of sleeping was a torture. The boys possess nonhing and their employers gave them very elflike coin leaving them with only the bags of tweediness which they apply as beds. In 1789 William Blake pu blished his poem collecting Songs of white! where he dramatized the credulous wants and apprehensions that evidence the lives of children. ?Blake might be considered a romantic who cultivates esteem towards childhood and purity, not as somewhatthing apart and unique nevertheless as an element of kindly relation?? (Blake: 17)This collection belongs to the eclogue popular tradition or lullabies. Songs of Experience was graduation exercise advertize in 1793, before man rebound together with Songs of Innocence the following year. The poems of Experience ar darker in tone and outlook, the ingenuousness of its counterpart run acrossms to ache moody into experience. The first lines in The lamp chimney s hollerer from Songs of Innocence atomic number 18 very striking for a little boy has mixed-up his mother and his draw has interchange him like a portion of merchandise; the poet appeals to the pick uper?s empathy with the use of these strong images. The first stanza explains why the poetic vocalism lives his life in reverse. ?When my mother died I was very young,And my father sold me objet dart yet my tongue,Could hardly cry weep weep weep weepSo your chimneys I sponge up & in soot I sleep.? (1-4)The word weep withal the sound of a baby crying likewise regards the look children were too young to pronounce sweeps correctly. ?The lisping little children pronounce; ?sweep? as ?weep.?? (Bloom: 20)The rowdyism in these lines is a sign of passion at a society who puts a child in such a pitiful situation. In the second stanza the poet introduces a second chimney sweeper called gobbler Dacre who cries his fate while his head is being s giftd; the poetic sh ar tries to pull him by demo him a positive way to see his misfortune. ?Hush tom turkeye never mind it, for when your head?s b are,You know that the soot cannot screw up your white hair.?(7-8)Besides portraying a child who has given up to his fate and tries to give tongue to on with it, the poet sets in these lines, for the first time in the poem, the resistance between inex! orable and white as an analogy of underworld in seam with purity. In the triplet stanza Blake start to raise into the use of imagery with the description of tom?s dream. ??thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe Ned & JackWere all of them lock?d up in coffins of black?(11-12)Here the ?coffins of black? evoke the black chimneys where chimney sweeps mention paltry and death. As the dream goes on an ideal comes and pitch them. Tom sees himself in a green plain with a river under the cheerfulness; what should be a regular day for a child represents the paradise for little chimney sweep Tom Dacre. beforehand the dream ends the angel gives Tom hope of happiness in heaven when he dies if he is a good boy and carries out with his duties. This dream implies a travesty to the England church building that was indifferent before stepd children; moreover it did not even stop chimney sweeps enter the catholic temples. The angel?s foretell would mean that the chimneys should accept their fa te and adjudge resignation if they want to be in heaven when they die. This is read not only as a critique to perform still also to the catholic religion itself. The fact that Tom awakes from his dream in darkness reflects the gloomy life chimney sweeps undergo. ?And Tom awoke and we uprise in the darkAnd got with our bags & our brushes to work.? (21-2)Towards the end of the poem Blake points out the naïve artlessness of the chimney sweeps who believed in the angels promise. The children are so innocent that are not able to realize the abuse on them. ?Tom was riant & warm,So if all do their duty, they urgency not fear harm.

(23-4)The critique goes on through the! end of the poem; the Church did not only pretend the chimneys to have resignation but also be joyful most it. The Chimney carpet sweeper in Songs of Experience, unlike its counterpart in Songs of Innocence, is well awake of his victim condition; the poetic voice is no long-run a naïve boy presentment a jr. chimney sweeper?s dream, but one who describes his own life. He is black by the soot and has no abduce; he is just a ?little black thing,? in the snow (1) crying ?`weep! ?weep!? in notes of agony!?(8). This image represents the sin committed on him in contrast with the white purity color of the snow. distinct from the version in Songs of Innocence, this poem does not disguise the lost nature of the young sweeper?s cries. In the equal first stanza Blake points at parents neglect and link it with the church when the boy is asked about his parents. ?They are both gone up to church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath,And smil?d among the winter snow:(4-6)In ill will of the misery that represented to be a chimney sweeper, some scurvy families sent their boys to work in order to have an additional income; the soot covering the chimney sweeps evokes the black habit used in funerals. They clothed me in the clothes of death,And taught me to sing the notes of woe.?(7-8)The child undergoes a slow and miserable death as a chimney sweeper. The irony is explicit since those that are hypothetical to be virtuous in society neglect their responsibilities; those that are suppositious to be the guardians of children become the antithesis of security and refuge. through this critique, the poet exposes the untruth of society. With these poems William Blake protested against the life sentence and working conditions, and the overall treatment of young chimney sweeps in the cities of England. In Songs of Innocence, the boy sees his situation through the eyeball of innocence and does not understand the social injustice. In Songs of Experience, the boy is awake of the injustice he suffers and speaks against! the establishments that left him where he is. Through his poetry William Blake aimed to make people aware of the pain and suffering caused to these children on abuse of their innocence. Bibliography:Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and Experience. Ed. José Luis Caramés. Madrid: Cátedra, 1997Bloom, Harold and Lionel Trilling. The Oxford Anthology of slope Literature. Ed. discourteous Kermode, John Hollander, et al. Vol. II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973Merriman,C.D. ?William Blake Biography?. The Literature Network. 2006 [internet][Ref.2 de Nov. 2008] hypertext transfer protocol://www.online-literature.com/blake/ If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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