Chimney Sweeper 🧹 Flashcards
From the collection …
Songs of experience
A little black thing among the snow
Highlights vulnerability and helplessness
Dehumanises the boy
Juxtaposition between black (a dark mark on the conscience of society) and snow (pure as snow- innocence)
Crying weep weep in notes of woe
Alliteration
Repetition
Emphasises his sadness
Happy upon the heath
Alliteration
Taught me to sing the notes of woe
Forced to work because he was happy
They are both gone up to the church to pray
False hope to those in poverty
Parents too busy with religious authority
Message
Society had oppressed and exploited the natural joyfulness of youth
Message from romantics
Believe innocence and childhood are important and are hindered by urban life of civilisation
Promotes romantic ideals
Aiding social conscience and offering a solution to societal ills: romanticism
Who make a heaven of our misery (inc Blake’s intention)
Not a real heaven, a corrupt place
Blake is criticism church. Although he was deeply religious, he was anti-establishment and anti-church believing that they corrupted society
Religion/church- Separate from faith and spirituality (a relationship with God personally)
Structure
3x quatrains
Simplicity, perhaps simplicity of the solution Blake is trying to promote whilst criticising the establishment: romanticism
Irony
Child is left to fend for himself
Clothes of death
Metaphor
Severity of life as a chimney sweep and enevital death
Tone
Accusatory
Melancholy
