The Chimney Sweeper By William Blake - 1487 Words

The end of the eighteenth century was a dangerous time to be a child living in England; common folk everywhere were struggling to get by. Parents could not afford to feed and care for their children, so mothers and fathers had no choice but to sell their sons and daughters. Unfortunately, the career that children were forced into was chimney sweeping, which had a terrifyingly high mortality rate. The poem, â€Å"The Chimney Sweeper†, written by William Blake, tells the heartbreaking story of a child who is sold into chimney sweeping at a young age and leads a devastating life. After reading Blake’s poem about the sweepers, one may begin to wonder how it was possible for children to be treated so poorly, and how the king of that time could allow conditions for his people to get so bad. Thomas Paine shared his opinion on the caste system in his work Rights of Man. Paine explains that there are plenty of people that have lived undesirable lives for the king who are not ack nowledged in politics, like the common folk who have been let down by the flawed caste system, including the chimney sweepers and other laborers. Because of the immense inequality taking place during this time, simply through birthrights, it becomes an important topic to focus in on. The works of Blake and Paine together give the audiences a new point of view on England’s political system at the end of the eighteenth century. These works protest the push away from the establishment and a push towards representingShow MoreRelatedThe Chimney Sweeper By William Blake1306 Words   |  6 PagesWilliam Blake published â€Å"The Chimney Sweeper† in 1789 in the first phase of his collection of poems entitled â€Å"Songs of Innocence†. A later poem under the same name was published five years later in his follow up collection, â€Å"Songs of Experience†. The chimney sweeper’s tale begins in Songs of Innocence with the introduction of a young boy who was s old by his father after the death of his mother; the poem then shifts in the next stanza to describe the speaker’s friend Tom Dacre, another chimney sweeperRead MoreThe Chimney Sweepers By William Blake862 Words   |  4 Pages The Chimney Sweepers William Blake has written two poems with the same title of Chimney Sweeper, however each poem was written to portray a different perspective of similar situations. The poem Chimney Sweep (Songs of Experience) is written in a bleaker scope compared to Chimney Sweep (Songs of Innocence) which happens to be much more optimistic.Willaim Blake had written these stories as foils of one another and which has helped readers compare and contrast the messages that the poems are tryingRead MoreThe Chimney Sweeper by William Blake1202 Words   |  5 PagesWilliam Blake, author of Songs of Experience, wrote various poems, which are accompanied by their contradicting Songs of Innocence poems. Through the contradiction of both poems, Blake emphasizes the need for both innocence and experience in order to live a good life. In â€Å"The Chimney Sweeper†, Blake shows the life of a young orphan boy. In the songs of innocence poem, the boy is naive and is unaware of the injustice around him; how ever, the songs of experience poem contradict that life style andRead MoreChimney Sweeper William Blake2301 Words   |  10 PagesWilliam Blake proved himself as one of the most influential artists to spring from the Romantic Era without a doubt. What made Blake so popular may have been his ability to portray his time period in works of art that were beautifully crafted. Blake’s poetry was not appreciated during his lifetime because people were living the lives his works vicariously told, but once his time period ended, a historical book was left behind. The theme of a struggle is most prominently showcased in Blake’s poetryRead MoreThe Chimney Sweeper By William Blake1887 Words   |  8 PagesWilliam Blake, author of The Chimney Sweeper, gives the reader an uncomfortable feeling of the acceptance, and cruelty of child labor. With the use of anecdote, biblical allusions and a very sympathetic and retributive tone—Blake is able to transform the surreal idea of child labor into a visual reality. The poem revolves around a little boy, who the narrator describes as a â€Å"little black thing†, who is working as a sweeper in very poor and hopeless conditions. Through the voice of the child chimneyRead MoreThe Chimney Sweeper by William Blake515 Words   |  2 PagesWilliam Blake’s poem, â€Å"The Chimney Sweeper† is a poem about children losing their innocence and being forced to clean chimneys. The setting is in the industrial period when children in orphanages being sent to work at such a young age. The young boys were usually the ones to be put to work because they were small enough to get into the chimneys and clean them. Children in this era eventually were diagnosed with Black Lung Disease because they inhaled too much soot in their lungs. The poem opensRead MoreThe Chimney Sweeper by William Blake Essay596 Words   |  3 PagesIn the Chimney Sweeper, William Blake portrays the lack of innocence in these young boys lives since they are expected to have attained the experience to preform such unjust actions. The speaker of the poem begins it by letting us know that after his mother passed away his father gave him up to be a chimneysweeper so he could obtain money. These two figures, his mother and father are whom kids are supposed to depend on and look up for guidance. He feels abandoned because his mother is gone andRead MoreSocial Criticism in William Blakes Chimney Sweeper3015 Words   |  13 PagesSocial Criticism in William Blake’s â€Å"The Chimney Sweeper† ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ by William Blake criticises child labour and especially society that sees the children’s misery but chooses to look away and it reveals the change of the mental state of those children who were forced to do such cruel work at the age of four to nine years. It shows the change from an innocent child that dreams of its rescue to the child that has accepted its fate. Those lives seem to oppose each other and yet if one readsRead MoreWilliam Blake s Inscription On The Young Chimney Sweepers1382 Words   |  6 PagesWilliam Blake s Inscription on the Young Chimney Sweepers By: Kyle Fitch Prof. Joseph McNally Engl. 3312 B April 20, 2015 A key point in the history of mankind was the Industrial Revolution. It was also a difficult time in history in terms of suffering, especially for the lower class that had to work twice as hard as the upper class for minimum wage. A young poet by the name of William Blake became livid and motivated in the late eighteenth century by the coldhearted usage of young boysRead MoreThe Chimney Sweeper and London by William Blake and Tich Miller and Timothy Winters2299 Words   |  10 PagesThe two poems â€Å"The Chimney Sweeper† and â€Å"London† by William Blake, and the two poems â€Å"Tich Miller† and â€Å"Timothy Winters† are all on a theme of childhood, however, they are set in different eras and so childhood should be very different. Discuss this, comparing and contrasting the poems. As a child, William Blake was a loner. He never socialised with other children and sat by himself reading the Bible. His family were very religious, but did not agree with organised religion. This meant