Chimney Sweeper Essay Example for Free

Chimney Sweeper EssayA great writer, or poet, go away make their commentators feel as if they are a part of their story. The reader will feel happy when the character is happy, or sad when the character is sad. This is achieved by various rhetorical strategies that writers use. Some of these strategies include imagery and word diction. Some times it is one sentence that re completelyy gets to the reader. Other times it is simply one word that can make the reader feel anything from warm to sad. In William Blakes metrical com direct, The Chimney Sweeper, from Songs of Innocence, there is an important transition in which the readers sense of emotions change from negatively charged ghosts of darkness, death, and misery to positive emotions of happiness, anticipate, and salvation. This transition in emotions reflects the claws naturalness and oblivion to his victimization whereas in the same meter from Songs of Experience the child is certain that he is the victim and there fore only reveals feelings of acrimony and sarcasm.This contrast is important to my understanding of the Innocence poesy because it reveals a softer and more innocent perspective than the poem of Experience does. In the first half of the poem Blake uses word diction that gives off negative con nonations in order to illustrate the horrible conditions the one-year-old lamp chimney drag iners jazz in. The end run says, And my father sold me while tho my tongue/Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep (2-3). Not only does the word weep clearly give off a sense of sadness and depression, but the fact that it is restate four times puts an emphasis on the sadness that the chimneysweeper feels.The quote implies that the father sold his child at a very young age. As a result, the child was still too young to weep and therefore could not refuse to be sold. Another quote says, So your chimneys I sweep in soot I sleep (4). When one hears the word sweep, they are imagining dirt and vulga rity being lifted off the ground. Moreover, the phrase in soot I sleep, if one imagines it in a literal sense, shows that the child is literally sleeping in soot, which is the black debris that the smoke from the chimney creates.As a result, this quote illustrates a dirty and filthy setting that these chimneysweepers are forced to live in. A phrase that, without a doubt, gives off a sense of death and hell is coffins of black (12). The chimneysweeper uses this phrase to describe where the other chimneysweepers are locked in Toms dream, which is still filthy and more or less suffocating. While these quotes and phrases observe and reveal the terrible conditions that these children are living in, the chimneysweeper in the Experience poem reasons why he is living in those conditions by blaming his parents.This comparison makes evident the different perspectives from each poem. Hints of hold are first revealed in the Innocence poem where Blake uses the childs sarcasm to show that in mo ments of darkness and unhappiness there is still space for optimism so as not to suffer so much. This is revealed when the chimneysweeper reassures Tom to never mind it, for when your heads bare/You know that the soot cannot outrage your white hair (7-8). In a way this would make Tom feel hopeful because with a bare head, the soot cannot ruin his hair.But in a metaphorical sense, it implies that darkness (the soot) will not prevail over everything, which gives one hope. What follows this sense of hope is Toms description of his dream And by came an Angel who had a bright key/And he opend the coffins set them all spare/Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run/And wash in a river, and gleaming in the Sun/Then naked and white, all their bags left behind/They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind. (13-18) This stanza contains numerous amounts of haggling and phrases that all give a positive connotation of hope, emancipation, warmth, and happiness.Words such as Angel, b right key, laughing, Sun, and white give off a feeling that is too good to be true, which explains why it is a dream in the first place. But that hope and happiness is so strong that when Tom awakes, he continues his work happily. This utopian perspective clearly shows the innocence of these children, while the child in the poem of Experience has no sense of hope because he is conscious of the reality he is living in. While the children in the Innocence poem use religious words and phrases to give them something to look forward to, the child in the Experience poem condemns religion.Blake shows how religion is used to intimately condone the treatment and conditions of these chimneysweepers when he writes, And the Angel told Tom, if hed be a good boy/Hed have God for his father and never want joy (19-20). This quote implies that obedience and sticking to your duties will bring happiness in the futurity. The same thing is implied when the chimneysweeper says, So if all do their du ty they need not fear harm (24). In other words, as ample as these chimneysweepers continue with their gruesome work while refraining from complaints, they will be happy and will be rewarded in the after demeanor for their good behavior.This mentality seems to convince the children that it is acceptable live in these horrible conditions because they will be rewarded once they pass. In contrast, the child in the Experience poem does not see the afterlife or God as something or someone to look forward to because he blames God for the position he is in. He mocks God by saying, And are gone to praise God and his Priest and top executive/Who make up a heaven of our misery (11-12). The childs parents are praying in the perform and believe that they have not caused their child any injury.In this case, it is the parents that are condoning the brutal life of their child. This major(ip) difference between the two poems is important because it reveals how differently each child views the si tuation they are in as chimneysweepers. Blakes use of word diction and imagery in the poem of Innocence and in the poem of Experience differentiates the two opposing perspectives of each poem. Because the Innocence poem transitions from darkness and hopelessness to freedom and hopefulness, my understanding of this poem is extremely different from the other.It is clear that the chimneysweeper in the Experience poem is aware that he is the victim therefore, his feelings of sadness and despair block him from seeing any hope. Instead, he blames God and his parents for the life he lives. In contrast, I am given the sense that the chimneysweeper in the Innocence poem is completely oblivious to the fact that he is a victim, and therefore it is easier for him to see the light in the darkest moments in this sense he is still innocent of any hard feelings towards his father or God.