Social Criticism in William Blakes Chimney Sweeper

Social Criticism in William Flakes The lamp chimney Sweeper The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake criticizes minor labor and especially community that jibes the chel arns misery that chooses to look away and it reveals the convert of the mental state of those infantren who were forced to do such cruel work at the age of foursome to nine years. It shows the change from an innocent electric s deportr that trances of its rescue to the pincer that has accepted its fate. Those lives seem to oppose for each integrity other(a) and yet if peerless reads the poems carefully, one rotter see that they have a lot in common too.The poem was inspired by the first laws that were supposed to make the chimney sweepers behavior wear out, exactly since those laws were loosely enforced Blake needed to draw attention to their horrible situation and wanted society to be alive(predicate) of this problem to reinforce the existing and make new laws. Blake shows the life of cardinal dif ferent chimney sweepers, one in truth naive child, Tom, that somehow managed to keep some of its childlike innocence and one that he calls experienced that sees his life more realistic and shows who is to blame for this situation. wholeness understructure find many phrases that underline Toms innocence passim the mom plainly the tokens of the hair that is compared to a lambs wool and the White hair confirm that first impression one use ups when reading the poem. light Toms dream is other symbol of his innocence. He dreams of an nonsuch that comes to rescue him with a gleaming key. In Gardeners book Flakes Innocence and Experience Retraced he comments on the dream solely as well has a very interesting theory of the black coffins meaning.The gowned figure of Christ appears in the illustrations to all these poems, and in The Chimney Sweeper the same gowned figure releases the sys from the coffin of black, which epitomizes the horizontal flues (the size of a childs coffin) whi ch killed so many infant sweeps (Gardner 66). His theory is that the black coffins symbolize the small chimneys where many children got suck and suffocated. Which is a commonsensical theory chimneys that were built at that time were made very narrow and many children werent able to get divulge of them anymore.Here Blake criticizes that many children had to Jeopardize their life to do their Job. At first there was a abject attempt to regulate this children were sweeping the chimneys thou clothes so the clothes could non get caught and shut away the children in a chimney but this solution was inhumane as it takes away the childs dignity and a nonher point that had to be called to attention at that time The childrens rights as they did not have any. And it wasnt in force(p) about(predicate) the childrens rights but also without clothes the children hurt their knees and elbows very a lot.This was even worse because of the infections through the porn as chimney sweepers were was hed rarely and were sleeping on the soot they swept during the day and in a black and very narrow room with all the other chimney sweepers. Blake also criticizes that those children are in complete darkness most of their time. They rose in the dark (line 21), spend their day sweeping chimneys and when they were through with(p) they would walk from door to door asking for more work and then got back into their black board to go to sleep.So this stands in contrast with the life little Tom dreams of where he is universe washed, can numeration free and enjoy his life as children should be able to do. And washed in the river, and shine in the sun/ then naked and white, all their bags left behind/ they rise upon the clouds and sport in the wind (line 6-18). Toms dream creates a bit of hope in the reader that Tom might be able to be adroit and consoled by this dream but this hope is dismissed at the end of the poem.Though Tom is warmly and happy inside, the cold morning shows that in realness the angels consolation is not much of a consolation and the reader knows that even the older boys wait on that the hair cannot be spoiled if it is shorn off would not help much either. Also those words like dark and harm create a deadly atmosphere and through the broken rhyme scheme the reader is thrown back into Toms dark reality. So at the ND the reader does not have a choice but to deal with this reality and think about the boys situation which is what Blake intended The conditions of the places the children slept in were another point that Blake criticizes. He sleeps in soot instead of the early mothers bosom or lap. But practiced as the mother shields the child from the sharp beams of theologys love until he is able to bear them alone, so the sweepers soot is ironically his shield (Inurn 19). As this quote states the child should sleep on the mothers lap instead of soot that a child is supposed to be love and taken care of but instead it is interchange and surr ounded by luckless.I disagree with the second controversy that the mother shields a child from the intense beams of divinity fudge and what it is compared to the reason why I disagree is that Blake was not a very religious person for his time and I doubt that he meant to draw a conjunctive between the mothers loving shield to an ironic shield of soot. This interpretation is going away too much from the original line of reasoning and there is too much imagination in this thought. Blake criticizes that children were so young when they were change to be chimney sweepers that they couldnt talk properly yet.The reason for this was that the chimneys were so narrow an older child would not be able to crawl through. This fact is shown very clear in the first line of both poems but the picture gets much more distinct in the second and third line where the child says he could not even pronounce the word sweep and says blazon out instead. Those children were too young to be aware of thei r situation until they were enslaved, and when they did understand it, they would cry like Tom when he gets his hair cut.The precisely consolation the other older boys can give is that now his beautiful white hair cannot e spoiled. But if this is a ingenuous consolation at all is up to the reader to decide. Blake does not indicate whether he agrees or disagrees. From the mature or maybe the experienced point of view, it is in fact no consolation at all but little Tom seems to believe it is a equitable one. When my mother died I was very young, and my father sold me while yet my tongue could scarcely cry N. pep Weep Weep (line 1-3). But the M. pepWeep Weep does have two meanings. The first one I Just explained but it also suggests that even the innocent child is suffering and shows it through weeping. Though he does not consciously realize it yet, subconsciously he is weeping and not Warm and happy at all. The unidentified second child uses this sentence again, but here it does not symbolize the childs inability to speak but the experience that is causing the child to weep. Another point of indirect criticism is that chimney sweepers were punished if they disobeyed.One is not told directly what was to happen to the children if they did not do as they were told one only knows that the child is going to be harmed if the work is not done so if all do their duty they need not headache harm (line 24). This criticizes the way those children were treated. Some sweepers had to climb up a chimney while the fire was burning in the fire place if the child refused they were forced by fire, slaps, prodding with poles, or by the pricking of the bottoms of their feet with pins (Inurn 17).Blake also criticizes the church, graven image and society. In the Songs of Innocence, little Toms dream can be seen as a sign from God or from heaven and one can view it as a metaphorical representation of the church. So it implies that the chimney sweepers believe in the church and G ods help Just as they believe in the dreams message. This meaner the churchs help is compared to the angels consolation that if Tom was a good boy/ hed have God for his father and never want Joy (line 19-20) which is no consolation.This is Flakes indirect criticism of the church that does not help those children and of God. He raises the question of how God can be truly good if he sees this injustice and does not act to prevent those children from being harmed. And Punter explains in this book about the Songs that Blake used to Associate the angelic with goodness but increasingly as the years went by he connected it with a mind of hypocritical self-righteousness (Punter 17) so the angel in Toms dream would not be a good sign but a symbol for a hypocritical society.In the second poem the criticism goes on as the question is raised where the parents of the chimney sweeper are, since it is their duty to take care of their child but they left the child and went to pray to God instead. And there is more criticism of the parents The child asks if they sold it because it was happy and if it is its time to suffer now because it has been happy once? This question is meant for the reader to think about if it can e right that a child has been sold because it did not show how much it is suffering. In the second poem, the reader gets to know that the child is not allowed to go to church to pray to God.Blake criticizes that children were outcasts of society Just because of their profession and there are records showing that chimney sweepers were thrown out of church if they tried to participate mass even if they were wearing the right clothes, which only a few chimney sweepers were provided with in the first place. As an instance in what a dash these myopic children are treated, I remember n anecdote of a little band of them, who had the destiny to be supplied with Sundays clothing their faces, however, proclaimed them chimney-sweepers.Curiosity, or information that th e churches were houses of God, carried them within the gates of a church but alas They were operate out by the beadle, with this taunt, What have chimney sweepers to do in a perform? (Inurn 18). Since there were many families that were so poor at the time the poem was written that they could not pass on and sold them in order to prevent them from starvation. This is what Gardner meaner n this quotation The Gap between the respectable and the non-respectable poor was consequently widening (Gardner xvii).The two Songs show some contrast but as one can see in the criticism there are many symbols that show up in both poems. Little Toms white hair that is shorn off shows his innocence that is being taken away from him yet the obscure child in the second poem is referred to as a little black thing, the nameless child is almost seems black among the white snow, which shows that his innocence already is lost and that experience has given him the black affectation that makes him stand out from civilization. Nowadays one could also compare this to black people being outcasts of society in America that were sold Just like the chimney sweepers.And the word sold is meant to stand out in the second line. Just like the black slaves in America those children were sold to a mortify to be sweeps. This would have been criticized a lot more nowadays as slavery still was quite a common back then when the poem was written. The child in the second poem does not have a name and there are several reasons for that Blake did not want to focus on one child and its situation but show that in act there are many children and therefore the child doesnt have a gender so it doesnt represent Just boys or Just girls as they were treated the same.This is a contrast to the first chimney sweeper Tom, who has a name, emotions and feelings so one can sympathies with him. The second childs experience is not presented as clearly as Toms innocence but through its uncover vision of its destiny a nd the way it accepts its fate. The child knows it has been wronged by its parents who were supposed to take good care of it and sold it like and object but it also has been ranged by God and the priest and the King who make up a heaven of our misery (line 11). They try to pretend its a perfect domain of a function and do not look at those children too closely, but since they make up a heaven (line 13) a wear world, they clearly must be aware of the misery around them. Also Blake is playing with the readers conscience in the Songs of Innocence the child says that he is sweeping your chimney. The reader is included and addressed directly this implicates the reader in the circle of exploration (Seasick 53). This is also shown in Garners book Alone among all the voices of Innocence, the chimney sweeper speaks from unrelieved pauperism and an enforced self-reliance his counterpart in Experience speaks from familiar exploration.The two sweeps state a condition, the dissimilitude be ing in relationships, as the illustrations signify (52). Blake does not speak for himself in his poems, he creates a cashier that states his thoughts this way Blake can show two different states of mind or point of views without disagreeing with his previous statement and does not become unbelievable through those contradictions that may result from this. Blake believes that one cant separate those states (innocence and experience) from each other, they Just show the same world from a different perspective.Flakes poems presents a contradiction between the states of innocence and experience, two phases through which all people must pass. It shows the untainted world of an innocent child against the mature world of experience and corruption. Tom is both innocent and yet somehow experienced too because of his hard work. When he is conscious he is innocent but in his dreams even though they are very good and innocent, he still knows that it is to the right way he is being treated, bec ause he is dreaming of a better life He child must indulge in symbolic compensations for his real lot (Adams 261). One can also see this in the contrast in the sentence that If hed be a good boy. (line 19). Being a good boy meaner doing his duty here. The contrast in this sentence is that in reality people are supposed to be good and do their duty, but in this case to do his duty would mean that he hurts himself and maybe dies trying to be good. Blake does not ally with one special(prenominal) point of view since all humans have to go through both tastes.In the Songs of Innocence life is seen through the childs eyes thus showing the innocence but in the Songs of Experience it almost appears as if it is seen through the eyes of an adult, showing that children cant stay innocent in those conditions. It shows that sooner or later the child cant believe in those promises the angel gives in the Songs of Innocence and that it bequeath lose its innocence. This innocence Can be both imaginative and pathetic at the same time imaginative because the innocent child can transcend his outer environment ND pathetic because the child so obviously suffers from that outward existence Adam 206 This reference point will underline my statement that even though the child seems innocent, it is affected by the horrible things that are happening to the child. It also shows the conflict that the reader has to deal with does he believe in Toms innocence and hopes everything will work out for Tom so he can stay happy and warm or does the reader believe that the child cannot be this naive and even try to believe the angel. In my faith the reader cannot believe in Toms happy ending as he knows too much.As we read the mom, academic term beneath the chimney newly swept in Golden Square, our discomfort arises not from the necessity of chimney-sweeping, but from the sense that a child may belong so little to the living that he is driven for necessary solace to a posthumous explora tion (Gardner 52). Gardner shows that the reader will have to decide what he believes in the end. Works Cited Primary Sources Beer, John. Romanticism, Revolution and Language. The Fate of the Word from Samuel Johnson to George Eliot. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2009. Bentley, Gerald Decades, Jar. William Blake. The Critical Heritage. London and Boston