A student's analysis of the Chimney Sweeper in 'Songs of Innocence and Experience'

The Chimney Sweeper (songs of innocence and experience)

In Blake’s poems both innocence and experience (The Chimney sweeper) we see child cruelty during the time of Blake’s life and his views on such an act. We see that Chimney sweeping in this instance is merely one act of many just to show the vindictiveness brought on to children but could be changed to anything such a Work houses, and being a pupil at school.  

In The chimney Sweeper (songs of innocence) we notice that the imagery is very biblical. Although Blake describes the horrific job of the chimney sweepers, we are also made to believe that they are insulated from their working conditions by religious views. The use of religious descriptions of ‘angel figures’ implies very innocent surroundings as religion connotes innocence because it frowns upon temptation and evil acts. This challenges the idea of the ‘real world’ in which Tom Dacre lives in where Child Slavery is rife. Blake at a young age was very spiritual and claimed that he could see angel and spirits and this could be very influential in his writing and his idea of innocence. These issues of child cruelty also come across in The chimney Sweeper (songs of experience). ‘They clothed me in the clothes of death’, this suggests that the mother and father of the child have sent them to work in clothes they will one day put on them for a funeral as Chimney Sweepers’ families were often very poor. The idea of sending a child to their doom nowadays seems horrific as we cannot imagine killing off our own children for money. However, this could mirror a modern day civilization where there are many incidents of child cruelty through neglect and child abuse. This shows that Blake’s poems are very timeless and can be related to modern day society three hundred years later. 

The line ‘That curl’d like a lambs back’ suggests that the child is explained as if he were a lamb. In the bible Jesus(the lamb) was sacrificed o the cross to save the Christians. Maybe Blake views the children as ‘a lamb’ because society had almost sacrificed their children as slaves to get more money and save their poor society? However the horror of Child Labour is that children are locked in a society of unkindness and cannot get out. Tom’s Dream allows the angel to unlock an idealistic paradise where the children are freed to go without any rules. This could be Blake’s idea of innocence shown through playing in paradise. 

The colour white shows the innocence of the children in the paradise. Blake is writing a message to society that children should be playing. ‘then naked and white’, this reflects in the Poem in songs of experience where Blake calls the child ‘a little black thing’. His choice of colour shows that in this poem that the child is tarred with experience which is all over his body. Underneath the black, the child is white, suggesting that this child is innocent and should not be treated cruelly. Using vocabulary such as ‘little’ makes the reader empathise with the child as it seems helpless and weak, this also demonstrates the experience that the child has at he obviously has been mistreated for his outcome to be weak or helpless.  Finally, the use of colour in Blakes poems can show the difference in innocence or experience, in this poem Innocence is portrayed pure and white on the inside and experience is shown on the outside through the colour black. 

In the songs of experience- The chimney sweeper, the Parents think their child is happy? It is suggested by the language ‘praise God & his Priest & King Who make up a heaven of our misery’ that the chimney sweeper is angry at his death. The imagery made in ‘heaven of our misery’ creates appearance that all children that have died are angry at society ignoring the pain of their death. This is reinforced with the sarcasm that comes through this line and maybe shows he has lost his innocence by the ignorance of the parents and church. Which undermines the importance of the church in the Chimney Sweeper (songs of innocence) where we think that religion is there to blanket the children from their cruelty by Tom’s dream of the angel. 

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