The Chimney Sweeper

-831215370967000-82994545529500William Blake
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William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” is considered to be one of Blake’s more outspoken works, as it provides harsh social commentary on the issue of child labor. His use of anecdote, tone, biblical allusion, and design all contribute to the continuation of the theme of innocence in Blake’sSongs of Innocence.Many prominent Blake critics have suggested that “The Chimney Sweeper” was “inspired by the agitation which was then trying to pass laws against the use of children as chimney sweeps”.With this focus on advocating for children’s rights, Blake spends the first half of the work exposing the dangers of the job of chimney sweeping and the exploitation of children in this line of work. The first stanza highlights the fact that “boys (and even a few girls) as young as five were apprenticed by their parents to master sweepers in what amounted to both child labor and involuntary servitude”.Throughout the first three stanzas, Blake uses powerful imagery to illustrate the terrible conditions in which the children worked. The soot in which the narrator sleeps is not metaphorical, but literal”climbing boys did indeed sleep on the bags of soot they swept” (Lindsay 35). Blake describes an environment in which the boys were surrounded by soot to represent the soot that was in the boys’ lungs. Also, the “coffins of black” (SIE,Copy Z) represented “the narrow chimneys in which children sometimes got stuck and suffocated” (Lindsay 35).Blake’s attempt to invoke pity in the reader is also supported by his use of anecdote. The work is written through the perspective of an experienced chimney sweepwhowas so young that he couldn’t pronounce the word “sweep.” “The child’s lisp in pronouncing his cry sweep!’had its pathetic significance” (Damon 270) in that it invokes pity in the reader; Blake used the child’s inability to form speech, a problem associated with young children, to show the injustices of putting such young children in such a dangerous line of work. As an experienced sweep, the narrator consoles a new recruit, TomDacre, who “cried when his headwasshav’d” (SIE,CopyZ), a common practice, “since hair would collect large quantities of soot” (Essick52-3). However, the speaker reassures Tom that the shaving of his head is a good thing, for “the soot cannot spoil your [his] white hair” (SIE,Copy Z). The speaker’s ability to find “the silver lining of every cloud” (Essick53) embodies the tragedy of the poemthe children’s ability to remain innocent and optimistic in such a hopeless, oppressive environment.The second part of the work is focused around a vision that Tom has in which an angel appears to “set them all free” (SIE,Copy Z) from the oppressive conditions of chimney sweeping. A common motif in Blake’s works, angels “mercifully bring death, particularly to children” (Damon 22). Specifically, in “The Chimney Sweeper,” “an angel unlocks the coffins of the chimney sweepers” (Damon 22), signifying that the angel is bringing death to the children, thus liberating them from their oppressed state. In his dream, Tom dreams of the freedom to frolic in nature, “to wash in a river and shine in the Sun” (SIE,Copy Z). Tom’s dream is the epitome of a child’s innocence, as it shows that a child can still be optimistic, even when in the worst of situations. This innocence “can beboth imaginativeand pathetic at the same timeimaginative because the innocent child can transcend’ his outer environmentand pathetic because the child so obviously suffers from that outward existence” (Adams 260). Blake uses the fact that “the child must indulge in symbolic compensations for his real lot” (Adams 261) to invoke sympathy in the reader and develop a pitiful tone. However, Tom’s dream of death also represents the experience that comes with the children’s exposure to death in their dangerous line of work. Thus, Tom’s dream embodies the incredible coexistence of innocence and experience that Blake describes throughout the poem.The Angel’s focus on being “a good boy” (SIE,Copy Z) and doing “their duty” (SIE,Copy Z) brings about