The chimney sweeper - William Blake Flashcards
(5 cards)
A little black thing among the snow:
Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!
Use of ‘a’ instead of ‘the’ shows how unimportant the child is viewed as; there are many of them.
‘Little’ connotes a malnourished, scrunched up child
Call the child a ‘thing’ dehumanizes it, shows that they are viewed as nothing but workers.
Snow shows that the poem is set in winter, connoting desolation. Also juxtopositions between black (covered in soot) and white, death & evil against purity.
‘Weep’ is onomatopoeia, similar to the sound a broom makes.
Exclamation mark is used to show sarcasm.
Where are thy father & mother? say?
They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Bottom 2 lines show dialogue, child speaking.
‘Church to pray’ is meant to show hypocrisy - of going to church while allowing child labour. Irony, morality.
Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil’d among the winters snow:
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
Stanza focuses on taking advantage of innocence.
‘Clothes of death’ is symbolism for the dangers of the job; the children are likely to die.
There are 2 main emotions which juxtopose each other: childlike joy and sorrow, further intensified by the ABAB rhyme scheme. Shows how working stole their childhood.
And because I am happy, & dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King
Who make up a heaven of our misery
The first two lines are false pretense; it’s what the parents try to believe to not feel guilty.
‘God and his Priest and King’ critisizes people in power and the ethos of many religions - to take care of the weak/less fortunate.
‘heaven of our misery’ alludes to people profiting off the suffering and exploitation of child workers.
Key themes
- Corrupt society and child labour
- Innocence, exploitation and corruption
- Religious hypocrisy
- Loss of childhood
