Blake's The Chimney Sweeper William example essay topic

Report on William Blake's The Chimney Sweeper William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" was mainly about the possibilities of both hope and faith. Although the poem's connotation is that of a very dark and depressed nature, the religious imagery Blake uses indicates that the sweeps will have a brighter future in eternity. In lines 4 - 8 when Blake writes, "There's little Tom Dare, who cried when his head, That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said 'Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair. ' These lines symbolize faith in the biblical sense. Young Tom's is like that of the sacrificial lamb of God and when the narrator tells Tom to stop crying because he knows that the soot can not longer spoil his white hair he, is saying to Tom, once he makes this sacrifice nothing else can hurt him. Blake is saying that if the children make the sacrifice of living out their lives here on Earth, no matter how dark and dismal their lives may seem at the time, they will be rewarded in heaven as long as they know the glory of God and trust in him.

It is in lines 10 - 24 that the poem becomes one of hope. For when Blake writes "As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins and set them all free"; Blake's words ring true of hope for the sweeps in the sense that they will all be set free from the "Black coffins" that confine them, which are most likely the chimneys themselves in which they have to crawl into everyday by an angel, most likely meaning the angel of death.

"Then down a green plain a leaping and laughing, they run, And wash in the river and shine in the sun. Then naked and white all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind"; When Blake wrote these lines he was of course referring to the act of Baptism. Which is defined in the Bible as being a water ritual, used as a spiritual symbol. Through this process the sweeps would be washed clean of all of their sins and also be cleansed of all of the bad things in their lives including their jobs. "And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father, and never want joy". This line of the poem indicates that if Tom was a good child and did as he was told on Earth that he would not be forsaken by God as his parents had forsaken him in his former life, but instead he would have everything he could ever possibly desire and be completely content in his afterlife.

"And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm; So if all do their duty they need not fear harm". Through these words Blake reveals hope rather than despair because the focus is on immortality instead of life as a sweep. "The little Sweep's dream has the spiritual touch peculiar to Blake's hand... (Gilchrist)". As stated before Blake is trying to convey the message that no matter what the children have to endure in their life on Earth, that they will be rewarded up in Heaven if they behave well and do as their told, so that they will have nothing to worry about or fear any longer.

In conclusion, William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" is a profound poem about the possibilities of both hope and faith. This can easily be perceived by any reader with the help of Blake's imaginative writing ability. The emphasis that Blake seems to put on both God and the afterlife can be seen as a sign of this poem's true meaning. "A few have the quality of children's hymns, in which God appears a really loving Father, and mercy, pity, peace, and love, the virtues of childhood at its rare best, become the lineaments of His 'divine image'. This poem seems to do that with ease. "The occasional moral, as at the end of 'The Chimney Sweeper', is transformed by the poetry into an exquisite platitude of the world.

Its presence is an abstraction of nurse and completes the nursery atmosphere."Note, too, that the shepherd, the sheep, the cradle, and the rest are nursery symbols, thus enabling Blake to pass from the lamb to 'Him who bore its name' without any change of key". This allows Blake to easily transition between talking about life as a sweep and the afterlife without much trouble. "The emotions aroused by this poetry are instinctive and almost as characteristic of animals as of men. Indeed, it celebrates the life, motions, and feelings of all young things, with the apparent artlessness of a lamb's bleat or the cry of a bird, a baby's shout of astonishment or pleasure". This poem is very good at bringing out many emotions within those who read it. "By returning to these poetry seems to return to its own infancy, and the language is almost as free from meaning, apart from emotion, as a child's prattle (Burdett).".