William Blake’s the Chimney Sweeper

William Blake’s the Chimney Sweeper

  • Submitted By: memooo
  • Date Submitted: 01/18/2009 5:22 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 3691
  • Page: 15
  • Views: 1

William Blake’s volume of poetry entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience is the embodiment of his belief that innocence and experience were “the two contrary states of the human soul,” and that true innocence was impossible without experience. Songs of Innocence contains poems either written from the perspective of children or written about them. Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience, with quite a different perspective of the world. The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of mankind, explaining much of the despair found in Songs of Experience. Blake also believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, believe that children should be kept from becoming experienced entirely. In truth, he believed that children should indeed become experienced but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a number of these poems. The Chimney Sweeper, William Blake

William Blake’s, The Chimney Sweeper, focuses on the thoughts and feelings of a young orphan having to deal with the pressures of losing their parents and being forced to take part in child labor in order to live. The poet uses images and metaphors in order to show the child’s views on how and why his life has changed. Different structures and meanings are the result of these images and metaphors. The poet stresses on how young the child is, through the structure of the poem in order to suggest how wrong the pressures of child labor are.
The structure of this poem helps the reader understand where the poem is coming from, the eye’s of a child. This structure is shown through the way in which the poem is written. The poem is written in very simple wordings and as well in simple stanzas. This structure helps the reader see that the poem is about a young child who speaks in a very simple language. The...

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