The Little Boy Lost (Experience) Flashcards
Why did Blake abhor the established church and organised religion?
- Blake believed in the power of individual spiritual experience.
- And the Chruch of England stifiled this personal connection to the divine
- Blake saw the church as part of social and polical injusticies of the time
What type of rhetoric did Blake disagree with and why?
- Dogmatism and censorship of the established church
- Emphasis on hierarchy,
- The expectations everyone must interpret God in the same way which leaves no room for questioning.
- Blake disliked this as he had experienced god in diff ways during his lifetime.
How did Blake describe the church and government in the Marriage and Heaven and Hell.
“The Beast (state) and the Whore (church) rule without control.”
Summarise The Little Boy Lost
The poem is about a young boy who looses sight of his father during the night. His father ignores the boys pleas to slow down and the boy weeps. At the end it is suggested that his father was never there and his presence was either an illusion or imagined.
Describe the structure of the poem.
-2 quatrains
- ABCB/ABCD rhyme scheme
- Some slant rhymes
- Predominantly iambic, with alternating lines tetrameter and trimeter meter.
Give an overview of what the poem could symbolise
- Representation of parental neglect and failure
- Allegory of the severity and callousness of the church.
- Allegory for the paternalistic failure of government
- The act of loosing one’s faith and entering a word of experience and sin
What meter is the poem written in?
-Predominantly iambic
-With alternating lines
- of tetrameter and trimeter meter.
What significance does the meter have?
- Contributes to the poem’s musicality and accessibility
- Reflects the innocence of the boy
- Transition and change
“Father, father, where are young going?”
-Rhetorical question: Sense of Dismay. No direct speech from the father compounding a sense of lonliness and vulnerability. No protective presence.
- Epizeuxis: Creates an imploring desperate tone and rising panic.
“O do not walk so fast!”
- Is the father purposely malignant?
“Speak, father, speak to your little boy, or else I shall be lost.”
- “Lost” physically and metaphorically lost in the darkness. Abandonement from a parental figure promts this existential angst. Reflects human need for guidance.
- Diacope/ Imperatives- Desperation/ desire for connection, comfort and intimacy is ignored.
- Omission of the fathers voice signifies negelect. Silent treatment as ab abuse tactic. Church’s practice of shunning.
- “or else” negotation
What does the father symbolise?
- Representation of parental neglect and failure.
- Contextually represents the sellingof children into quasi-slavery
-Heavenly father (need for spirtual guidance) - Inverses image of the “Good Shepard” as there is no guiding force or protecter.
How is the poem an Allegory of the severity and callousness of the church?
- Represents the church abandoning its followers through its rhetoric and endorsement of systems of opression and abandomenet of Christs misson.
- Like the child looses his father, the congeration becomes disillusioned with a lack of true spirtual guidance.
What is religious shunning?
- The practice of believers avoiding former church members
- Who have acted in an immoral manner or have left the religion.
- This may be done informally or as a matter of policy.
What is the role of the Church?
Christ gave His Church the commission to spread the message of Salvation to the ends of the earth.
