In William Blake’s poetry, children are
presented
as innocent victims. Discuss with reference to both
“The
Schoolboy” and “The Chimney-Sweeper”
In both ‘The Schoolboy’ and ‘The Chimney Sweeper’, by William Blake, children are presented as innocent victims. Blake does this effectively by using form, structure and language. The ‘Schoolboy’ tells us of a young boy who is forced to leave all the leisures and freedom of his life and to go to school, where he deals with much more serious and important issues rather than just child’s’ play, such as physical cruelty. The ‘Chimney Sweeper’ is about a boy who has lost his mother at a young age, and therefore is sold and made to work one of the most dangerous jobs at that time. Both poems represent an innocent victim as both poems are about children who have done no wrong in their lives, yet are forced to work and do things they do not want to.
This shows relevance to Blake’s
life, as he did live in a time where school was hard work and cruel
and children were made to work dangerous jobs, such as chimney
sweeping, or in factories. He lived through the industrial
revolution, where many factories were being built and cities
expanding. An eighth of the work force was under thirteen years of
age, and many children had to go to work in factories instead of
getting an education. Blake did not believe in authority, and so
perhaps by representing his children as innocent victims he is
protesting against the injustice of the cruelty against them in his
lifetime through his poetry.
There are many ways in which Blake’s children are presented as
innocent victims in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ (in songs of
Innocence). In this poem, we hear of a boy who was sold by his father
as a chimney sweeper when he was so young that he couldn’t even cry
‘sweep, sweep’, which was they traditional cry of the sweeps to
advertise their presence. This immediately presents the child’s
innocence, as if he were so young how could he have committed any
evil when realising it. We then hear the boy
comforting a fellow sweep named Tom Dacre, who had just had
his blonde hair shaved off. Tom then goes to sleep and dreams that an
angel sets free all the sweeps so they can run, play and swim freely
in the innocence of youth. The angel tells Tom that if he is a 'good
boy' God will love him and he will never 'want joy'. When Tom awakes,
we learn that he is ‘happy and warm’, and we hear the moral of
the poem, which is ‘If all do their duty they need fear not harm’.
This is ironic, and once again presents the innocence of the sweeps,
for being a chimney sweeper could result in horrific illnesses, such
as lung or throat cancer or deformities, yet Tom is promised that he
has nothing to fear. Naïve as he is, he believes this, and so wakes
from his dream as ‘happy and warm’, convinced that he has nothing
to fear. Yet the sweep is just repeating the moral code of the
society at Blake’s time. This therefore reflects in the Victorian
reader, saying that it is your fault that the sweep does what he has
to, as it is your chimneys he sweeps. This again emphasises the point
that Blake’s poetry could often be a protest against the aspects of
everyday Victorian life he disagreed with.
The form and structure of the poem also present the children as innocent victims. It is a rhyming quatrain, and is in AABB form where the first and second lines rhyme and the third and fourth rhyme. It also has a structured rhythm throughout the poem. It has lyrical qualities making it sound like a nursery rhyme, which are often told to innocent children. Tom Dacre’s dream shows just how horrible the life of a sweep was, as it compares it to what they should have been doing at their age, which was ‘ Leaping, laughing they run, and wash in a river and shine in the sun’. By comparing this life to that of a sweeps, Blake once again shows that the sweeps are innocent victims. They should be leading a life of innocence, full of fun and games, yet even thought they have done nothing wrong they are still forced to live a life of misery.
The language Blake uses throughout the poem also reflects in an innocent victim. When he compares Tom’s hair to a lamb, ‘ (Tom) Cried when his head, that curled like a lamb’s back’, he is using this simile to show that the children are pure, as white is the colour of purity and lambs have white, curly fur. When the poem says ‘For when your head is bare, you know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair’, Blake is using this as a metaphor to show that if the sweeps accept the life they are given, then it will not spoil their innocence and purity. This basically means that if they put their happy, innocent lives behind them, then it cannot be spoiled, as in their minds it will no longer exist. Blake also uses his language to present innocence. When he uses phrases like ‘naked and white’, this means that they are pure, and also has reference to the bible. Adam and Eve were naked when they lived in the paradise of The Garden of Eden, yet when they ate the forbidden fruit, they realised they were naked and were no longer pure or innocent. This reflects in the poem, as it states that if the children had lived an innocent life, as they should be at their age, they would have been naked, and pure, just as Adam and Eve were. Blake also refers to religion when he says that ‘ the angel told Tom that if he’d been a good boy, He’d have God for his father, and never want joy’. This means that if Tom was good and did not sin in his life, then he would go to heaven and have God as his father. This also presents the children as innocent, as a common belief amongst young children is the deceptively simple fact that ‘If you are good, then you go to heaven. If you are bad, then you go to hell.’ Yet Blake did not agree with Christianity. His faith was of the Swedenborgian New Church. He believed that the truth was learned by personal revelation, not by teaching. What he called his 'visions' were perhaps hallucinations, experiences that he allowed to guide his life. It was these that gave him such a strong and uncompromising belief in his own artistic direction, but also led others to call him eccentric or even mad. This means that in his poem, he is suggesting that even thought the angel has promised to set the sweeps free and that they will be children of God, the sweeps still suffer a great deal and so he is suggesting that Christianity is wrong.
Blake did not believe in authority, and often wrote works critiscing religion and poilitics, such as his books, ‘The French Revolution’ (1791), ‘America: A Prophecy’ (1793) and ‘Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793)’. Blake developed his attitude of revolt against authority, combining political belief and visionary ecstasy. Blake feared government persecution and some of work such as The French Revolution was printed anonymously and was only distributed to political sympathisers. This reflects in the poems ‘The Schoolboy’ and the ‘Chimney Sweep’, as he is protesting against the cruelty to children in his time. Both children in the poems are being oppressed on different levels, one being sent to a school which he compares to a cage, (‘How can a child…sit in a cage and sing?’), whereas the other is forced to work a very dangerous job. Both children share the fact that they are forced to do what they don’t want, and Blake suggests that due to the politics and religion of Victorian times, they must carry it out.
The ‘Schoolboy’ is the story of a boy who enjoys an innocent life, ‘I love to rise in a summer morn, when the birds sing on every tree’ in the first stanza, yet in the next five he tells us of his frustrating experience of attending school in the summer days, where he is kept under the watch of a cruel teacher ‘Under a cruel eye outworn’ and finds himself bored ‘At times I drooping sit’. The poem consists of six stanzas, where there is a rhyming couplet if four lines, and an additional fifth line which rhymes with the fourth in every stanza. This makes the poem sound as though it is a song, which is what a child of the boy’s age would take great pleasure in, especially seeing as the boy refers to songs in his poem, and the fact he is not able to sing at school, ‘ How can a bird…sit in a cage and sing?’ The fifth line on each stanza keeps the poem moving on, and leads into the next stanza. It repeats the rhyme of the fourth line, which creates the effect of a school day, as it seems to make the poem trudge on and on.
The first stanza describes an innocent life the boy has been living, and immediately shows us that he takes joy in singing, and summer and playing about. This presents innocence, as the boy follows what most innocent children did in that day, not knowing any evil or right from wrong. Blake uses language to present the innocence here, such as ‘sweet company,’ describing the boys feelings towards the summer life around him. Blake also uses the first stanza to create a sort of utopia, when the boy rises to the singing of the birds, and the huntsman’s horn, and he can sing with a skylark with not a care in the world. Yet this feeling of paradise is taken away in the second stanza, ‘It drives all joy away’, as we learn that the boy has to attend school where the birds no longer sing and the atmosphere is no longer pure or innocent. He also describes the boys reaction to school, setting the scene that he feels he is supervised by a cruel teacher, and the ‘small ones spend the day in sighing and dismay’. When, in the first line Blake uses the word ‘but’, this shows that the stanza is going to be a contradiction of the first, meaning that the innocent rapture he set up in the first stanza is being replaced by the school which once again presents the innocence of the child. School was a very cruel place in Blake’s time, where corporal punishment and cruelty were often adopted.
In the third stanza we again hear the attitude the boy has towards his school, that he finds it boring: ‘Then at times I drooping sit, and spend many an anxious hour; nor in my book can I take delight’. He also makes reference to the weather and seasons throughout his poem, such as ‘Worn through the dreary shower’, which represents a pathetic fallacy, where the boys mood matches the weather. It starts in summer, (‘I love to rise in a summer morn’) when the boy is happy, and the quality of the weather gradually depreciates as the poem continues, going though autumn (‘buds are nipped, and blossoms blown away’) and ends up in winter (‘ When the blasts of winter appear’) which shows that the boy feels that school has taken the innocence and purity of his life and spoiled it, comparing his life to a cold winter with nothing to look forward to (‘how shall the summer fruits arise in joy’). This again presents the fact that he is an innocent victim, as his pure life is now ruined by something beyond his control.
In the fourth stanza, Blake compares the boy to a bird, saying how he will not be able to enjoy the leisures of his life, even though he is ‘born for joy’. This is presented in the language Blake uses, such as ‘droop his tender wing’, or ‘sit in a cage and sing’. Throughout the poem, Blake constantly refers to the fact that a boy who was once innocent and pure has now come to school and feels as though his life has turned into an eternal winter, full of cold and cruelty, and no light to shine on the beautiful aspects of life.
Blake was considered as a Romantic, and the Romantic movement was essentially a reaction to the 18th century and its unjust society. This is also reflected in Blake’s poem, London, which focuses on the lack of freedom, and the difficulties the urban poor have to deal with. He creates the sense that everyone is ‘in chains’ and a great deal of suffering is present. Human potential is still-born due to exploitation and appalling social inequality. Children are made to work up the chimneys, or the poem even suggests as prostitutes, while the aristocracy maintain their position while many ‘hapless soldiers’ are dying on their behalf.
In both poems, the ‘Chimney-Sweeper’ and ‘The Schoolboy’, Blake has presented his children as innocent victims who have had their pure, innocent lives spoiled by the oppression of Victorian society which they have each had to deal with in their lives. Both poems represent Blake’s general attitude towards the Victorian society; he believed that it was a corrupting influence, and this is shown as both the work and school of the children has corrupted them, changing them from naïve, pure young children, into experienced youths whose ideals of life have been altered. At the end of the poem, the Schoolboy has now realised that there is no light in the fact he has to go to school, and in the ‘Chimney-Sweeper’ in Songs of Experience, the chimney sweeper, even though he is innocent, has grown to accept that this was his fate, and always would be in a world where he would serve a corrupt, Victorian society.
The form and structure of the poem also present the children as innocent victims. It is a rhyming quatrain, and is in AABB form where the first and second lines rhyme and the third and fourth rhyme. It also has a structured rhythm throughout the poem. It has lyrical qualities making it sound like a nursery rhyme, which are often told to innocent children. Tom Dacre’s dream shows just how horrible the life of a sweep was, as it compares it to what they should have been doing at their age, which was ‘ Leaping, laughing they run, and wash in a river and shine in the sun’. By comparing this life to that of a sweeps, Blake once again shows that the sweeps are innocent victims. They should be leading a life of innocence, full of fun and games, yet even thought they have done nothing wrong they are still forced to live a life of misery.
The language Blake uses throughout the poem also reflects in an innocent victim. When he compares Tom’s hair to a lamb, ‘ (Tom) Cried when his head, that curled like a lamb’s back’, he is using this simile to show that the children are pure, as white is the colour of purity and lambs have white, curly fur. When the poem says ‘For when your head is bare, you know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair’, Blake is using this as a metaphor to show that if the sweeps accept the life they are given, then it will not spoil their innocence and purity. This basically means that if they put their happy, innocent lives behind them, then it cannot be spoiled, as in their minds it will no longer exist. Blake also uses his language to present innocence. When he uses phrases like ‘naked and white’, this means that they are pure, and also has reference to the bible. Adam and Eve were naked when they lived in the paradise of The Garden of Eden, yet when they ate the forbidden fruit, they realised they were naked and were no longer pure or innocent. This reflects in the poem, as it states that if the children had lived an innocent life, as they should be at their age, they would have been naked, and pure, just as Adam and Eve were. Blake also refers to religion when he says that ‘ the angel told Tom that if he’d been a good boy, He’d have God for his father, and never want joy’. This means that if Tom was good and did not sin in his life, then he would go to heaven and have God as his father. This also presents the children as innocent, as a common belief amongst young children is the deceptively simple fact that ‘If you are good, then you go to heaven. If you are bad, then you go to hell.’ Yet Blake did not agree with Christianity. His faith was of the Swedenborgian New Church. He believed that the truth was learned by personal revelation, not by teaching. What he called his 'visions' were perhaps hallucinations, experiences that he allowed to guide his life. It was these that gave him such a strong and uncompromising belief in his own artistic direction, but also led others to call him eccentric or even mad. This means that in his poem, he is suggesting that even thought the angel has promised to set the sweeps free and that they will be children of God, the sweeps still suffer a great deal and so he is suggesting that Christianity is wrong.
Blake did not believe in authority, and often wrote works critiscing religion and poilitics, such as his books, ‘The French Revolution’ (1791), ‘America: A Prophecy’ (1793) and ‘Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793)’. Blake developed his attitude of revolt against authority, combining political belief and visionary ecstasy. Blake feared government persecution and some of work such as The French Revolution was printed anonymously and was only distributed to political sympathisers. This reflects in the poems ‘The Schoolboy’ and the ‘Chimney Sweep’, as he is protesting against the cruelty to children in his time. Both children in the poems are being oppressed on different levels, one being sent to a school which he compares to a cage, (‘How can a child…sit in a cage and sing?’), whereas the other is forced to work a very dangerous job. Both children share the fact that they are forced to do what they don’t want, and Blake suggests that due to the politics and religion of Victorian times, they must carry it out.
The ‘Schoolboy’ is the story of a boy who enjoys an innocent life, ‘I love to rise in a summer morn, when the birds sing on every tree’ in the first stanza, yet in the next five he tells us of his frustrating experience of attending school in the summer days, where he is kept under the watch of a cruel teacher ‘Under a cruel eye outworn’ and finds himself bored ‘At times I drooping sit’. The poem consists of six stanzas, where there is a rhyming couplet if four lines, and an additional fifth line which rhymes with the fourth in every stanza. This makes the poem sound as though it is a song, which is what a child of the boy’s age would take great pleasure in, especially seeing as the boy refers to songs in his poem, and the fact he is not able to sing at school, ‘ How can a bird…sit in a cage and sing?’ The fifth line on each stanza keeps the poem moving on, and leads into the next stanza. It repeats the rhyme of the fourth line, which creates the effect of a school day, as it seems to make the poem trudge on and on.
The first stanza describes an innocent life the boy has been living, and immediately shows us that he takes joy in singing, and summer and playing about. This presents innocence, as the boy follows what most innocent children did in that day, not knowing any evil or right from wrong. Blake uses language to present the innocence here, such as ‘sweet company,’ describing the boys feelings towards the summer life around him. Blake also uses the first stanza to create a sort of utopia, when the boy rises to the singing of the birds, and the huntsman’s horn, and he can sing with a skylark with not a care in the world. Yet this feeling of paradise is taken away in the second stanza, ‘It drives all joy away’, as we learn that the boy has to attend school where the birds no longer sing and the atmosphere is no longer pure or innocent. He also describes the boys reaction to school, setting the scene that he feels he is supervised by a cruel teacher, and the ‘small ones spend the day in sighing and dismay’. When, in the first line Blake uses the word ‘but’, this shows that the stanza is going to be a contradiction of the first, meaning that the innocent rapture he set up in the first stanza is being replaced by the school which once again presents the innocence of the child. School was a very cruel place in Blake’s time, where corporal punishment and cruelty were often adopted.
In the third stanza we again hear the attitude the boy has towards his school, that he finds it boring: ‘Then at times I drooping sit, and spend many an anxious hour; nor in my book can I take delight’. He also makes reference to the weather and seasons throughout his poem, such as ‘Worn through the dreary shower’, which represents a pathetic fallacy, where the boys mood matches the weather. It starts in summer, (‘I love to rise in a summer morn’) when the boy is happy, and the quality of the weather gradually depreciates as the poem continues, going though autumn (‘buds are nipped, and blossoms blown away’) and ends up in winter (‘ When the blasts of winter appear’) which shows that the boy feels that school has taken the innocence and purity of his life and spoiled it, comparing his life to a cold winter with nothing to look forward to (‘how shall the summer fruits arise in joy’). This again presents the fact that he is an innocent victim, as his pure life is now ruined by something beyond his control.
In the fourth stanza, Blake compares the boy to a bird, saying how he will not be able to enjoy the leisures of his life, even though he is ‘born for joy’. This is presented in the language Blake uses, such as ‘droop his tender wing’, or ‘sit in a cage and sing’. Throughout the poem, Blake constantly refers to the fact that a boy who was once innocent and pure has now come to school and feels as though his life has turned into an eternal winter, full of cold and cruelty, and no light to shine on the beautiful aspects of life.
Blake was considered as a Romantic, and the Romantic movement was essentially a reaction to the 18th century and its unjust society. This is also reflected in Blake’s poem, London, which focuses on the lack of freedom, and the difficulties the urban poor have to deal with. He creates the sense that everyone is ‘in chains’ and a great deal of suffering is present. Human potential is still-born due to exploitation and appalling social inequality. Children are made to work up the chimneys, or the poem even suggests as prostitutes, while the aristocracy maintain their position while many ‘hapless soldiers’ are dying on their behalf.
In both poems, the ‘Chimney-Sweeper’ and ‘The Schoolboy’, Blake has presented his children as innocent victims who have had their pure, innocent lives spoiled by the oppression of Victorian society which they have each had to deal with in their lives. Both poems represent Blake’s general attitude towards the Victorian society; he believed that it was a corrupting influence, and this is shown as both the work and school of the children has corrupted them, changing them from naïve, pure young children, into experienced youths whose ideals of life have been altered. At the end of the poem, the Schoolboy has now realised that there is no light in the fact he has to go to school, and in the ‘Chimney-Sweeper’ in Songs of Experience, the chimney sweeper, even though he is innocent, has grown to accept that this was his fate, and always would be in a world where he would serve a corrupt, Victorian society.
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