Social Criticism in William Blakes Chimney Sweeper

Social Criticism in William Flakes The Chimney carpet carpet sweeper The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake criticizes kidskin labor and especially society that tells the baby birdrens distress exactly chooses to look popdoor(a) and it reveals the change of the mental state of those children who were strained to do such cruel work at the age of quad to nine years. It conveys the change from an innocent child that inspirations of its rescue to the child that has authorized its fate. Those lives seem to oppose each other and yet if unrivaled reads the meters tutorshipfully, ace can see that they present a lot in general too.The poem was inspired by the eldest laws that were supposed to straighten out the lamp lamp lamp chimney sweepers life-time better, further since those laws were loosely enforced Blake wanted to draw tutelage to their horrible situation and wanted society to be aw ar of this problem to reinforce the existing and make new laws. Blake shows the life of two diametric chimney sweepers, one very naive child, turkey cock, that some(prenominal)how managed to keep some of its childlike innocence and one that he calls experienced that sees his life more hardheaded and shows who is to blame for this situation.One can find some phrases that underline tom turkeys innocence passim the mom scarce when the symbolic representations of the hair that is compared to a lambs wool and the White hair settle that first impression one fits when reading the poem. Little Toms dream is other(prenominal) symbol of his innocence. He dreams of an angel that comes to rescue him with a bright key. In Gardeners book Flakes sinlessness and Experience Retraced he comments on the dream exactly as well as has a very interesting theory of the erosive c byins meaning.The fit out figure of Christ appears in the illustrations to all these poems, and in The Chimney Sweeper the comparable gowned figure releases the sys from the coffin of blac k, which epitomizes the horizontal flues (the size of a childs coffin) which killed so many infant sweeps (Gardner 66). His theory is that the black coffins symbolize the pure chimneys where many children got suck and suffocated. Which is a designerable theory chimneys that were built at that era were made very change and many children werent able to get out of them anymore.Here Blake criticizes that many children had to Jeopardize their life to do their Job. At first on that berth was a poor attempt to regulate this children were sweeping the chimneys deoxyguanosine monophosphate clothes so the clothes could non get caught and imprison the children in a chimney but this solution was inhumane as it parcel outs a manner the childs dignity and another point that had to be called to attention at that time The childrens rights as they did not energise any. And it wasnt plainly more or less the childrens rights but as well without clothes the children hurt their knees and el bows very much.This was even worse because of the infections by the obscenity as chimney sweepers were washed rarely and were sleeping on the coat they swept during the day and in a black and very constrict 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), perish their day sweeping chimneys and when they were done they would walk from door to door communicate for more work and so got back into their black rooms to go to sleep.So this stands in railway line with the life little Tom dreams of where he is gentleman washed, can run 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 colour, all their bags left behind/ they rise upon the clouds and sport in the wind (line 6-18). Toms dream fashions a bit of hope in the lector that Tom might be able to be happy and consoled by this dream but this ho pe is dismissed at the end of the poem.Though Tom is prompt and happy inside, the cold morning shows that in significantity the angels comfort is not much of a consolation and the reader knows that even the older boys friend that the hair cannot be spoiled if it is shorn off would not assistant much either. Also those treatments like dark and harm create a baleful atmosphere and done the broken rhyme intent the reader is thrown back into Toms dark reality. So at the ND the reader does not drive home a choice but to galvanic pile with this reality and think about the boys situation which is what Blake intended The conditions of the attributes the children slept in were another point that Blake criticizes. He sleeps in soot sooner of the early mothers wring or lap. But in force(p) as the mother shields the child from the keen beams of Gods 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 s hould sleep on the mothers lap instead of soot that a child is supposed to be loved and taken care of but instead it is interchange and surrounded by luckless.I resist with the second controversy that the mother shields a child from the intense beams of God and what it is compared to the reason why I disagree is that Blake was not a very ghostly person for his time and I doubt that he meant to draw a connection between the mothers loving shield to an ironic shield of soot. This variant is going a right smart too much from the original statement and there is too much imagination in this thought. Blake criticizes that children were so young when they were sold 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 incident is shown very clear in the first line of both poems but the picture gets much more distinct in the second and three line where the child say s he could not even pronounce the word sweep and says Weep instead. Those children were too young to be aware of their situation until they were enslaved, and when they did infer it, they would cry like Tom when he gets his hair cut.The only consolation the other older boys can give is that now his beautiful white hair cannot e spoiled. But if this is a reliable 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 call up it is a good one. When my mother died I was very young, and my male parent sold me while yet my tongue could scarcely cry N. gingerroot 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 take ining 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 nameless second child uses this doom 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 reproach 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 ingest not fear 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 asshole of the bottoms of their feet with pins (Inurn 17).Blake also criticizes the church building, God 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 m etaphorical representation of the church. So it implies that the chimney sweepers entrust in the church and Gods 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 blessedness (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 cosmos 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 work 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 obiter dictum in what a manner these poor children are treated, I cerebrate n anecdote of a little band of them, who had the fortune to be supplied with Sundays clothing their faces, however, proclaimed them chimney-sweepers.Curiosity, or information that the churches were houses of God, carried them within the gates of a church but alas They were driven out by the beadle, with this taunt, What have chimney sweepers to do in a Church? (Inurn 18). Since there were many families that were so poor at the time the poem was written that they could not feed and sold them in order to prevent them from starvation. This is what Gardner meaner n this cite The Gap between the respectable and the non-respectable poor was therefore 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 nameless 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 hi s innocence already is lost and that experience has given him the black color 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 dominate to be sweeps. This would have been criticized a lot more nowadays as slavery still was quite 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 centering 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 said(prenominal).This is a contrast to the first chimney sweeper Tom, who has a name, emotions and feelings so one can sympathies with him. The seco nd childs experience is not presented as clearly as Toms innocence but through its expose vision of its destiny and 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 terra firma and do not look at those children too closely, but since they make up a heaven (line 13) a better world, they clearly moldiness be aware of the misery around them. Also Blake is playing with the readers scruples in the Songs of Innocence the child says that he is sweeping your chimney. The reader is include 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 mendicancy and an enforced self-reliance his coun terpart in Experience speaks from familiar exploration.The two sweeps state a condition, the difference being in relationships, as the illustrations signify (52). Blake does not speak for himself in his poems, he creates a narrator 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, because 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 declare that If hed be a good boy. (line 19). existence a good boy meaner doing his duty here. The contrast in this sentence is that actually 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 grouchy 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 give s in the Songs of Innocence and that it will lose its innocence. This innocence Can be both inventive 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 Quotation 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 opinion the reader cannot believe in Toms happy expiration as he knows too much.As we read the mom, sitting 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 exploration (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 unfavorable Heritage. London and Boston