The Chimney-Sweeper Innocence

Question 1

My father sold me while yet my tongue could scarcely cry, ‘weep weep weep weep’

Answer 1

• Blakes commentary on child labour and abuse
• Link to the lamb
• ‘weep weep weep weep’ audible description, auricula imagery
• ‘scarcely’ -> emphasises the youngness of the child.

Question 2

‘There’s little Tom Dacre’

Answer 2

• ‘Tom Dacre’ -> full name which humanises him.

Question 3

curled like a lamb’s back was shaved

Answer 3

• Lamb imagery, reference to jesus? Sacrificial imagery
• ‘shaved’ -> dehumanising, convenience with no nurture.

Question 4

‘know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.’

Answer 4

• Contrasts of dark and light.
• White has associations with purity
• The innocence of the children cannot be tainted.

Question 5

‘Thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack.’

Answer 5

• ‘Thousands’ emphasises the enormity of the issue.
• ‘Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack.’ -> Monosyballic basic names represent everyone.

Question 6

‘all of them locked up in coffins of black,’

Answer 6

• Oppression imagery, the children are trapped.
• ‘coffins’ emphasises the dangers of the job. Children are working to death.

Question 7

‘an angel who had a bright key,’

Answer 7

• ‘bright key’ –> a beacon of hope, light in the dark.
• Angel is both the liberator and jailor, from one cage into another. Indoctrination.

Question 8

‘opened the coffins and set them all free.’

Answer 8

• Allusion to heaven. Heaven is where these hardworking children are promised to go.

Question 9

‘Then down a green plain leaping, laughing they run, and wash in a river and shine in the sun.’

Answer 9

• Natural imagery
• Encapsulates the child’s innocence and showcases the lives these children should have had.

Question 10

all their bags left behind,

Answer 10

• Representation of their worries and troubles in life?

Question 11

‘The angel told Tom if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for father, and never want joy.’

Answer 11

• These children must behave and sweep these chimney’s in order to get into heaven.
• Blind Faith
• Ventriloquist industrial voice.

Question 12

‘We rose in the dark,’

Answer 12

‘we’ collective, the narrator is a chimney sweeper, Indoctrination.

Question 13

‘So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.’

Answer 13

• Hopeful ending
• Faith in god takes away the fear of death.

Question 14

POV shift

Answer 14

Tom Dacre -> Omniscent narrator

Question 15

So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep

Answer 15

• Direct address
• Contributes to the overarching depiction of exploitation and brutality which instills underlining terror and fear in readers about the children who work as chimney sweepers.
• ‘Soot’-> dark imagery.

Question 16

Use of tense

Answer 16

• Past and present
• Child exploitation is an ongoing issue.

Question 17

Biblical allusions

Answer 17

• Only rescuing can be done by mythical beings
• No human is there to help the children.