The Chimney Sweepers Explication Essay

The Chimney Sweeper Explication

William Blakes poems The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Innocence and Sons of Experience show the terrible lives of children sweeping chimneys and intervention from the divine. The childrens lives are dismal because they have to work as chimney sweepers, a very dirty and dangerous job. Although their lives are not very good, the children hope it will get better. A divine power is needed to save them. A higher power is used to save and also take away everything from the children.

The kids do not want to work as dirty chimneysweepers, and this makes their lives miserable. A young worker is seen as A little black thing in the snow (Experience) showing how filthy the work is. Tom Dacre cried when someone shaved his head because when your heads bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair(Innocence). To escape this misery in the Songs of Innocence Chimney Sweeper, a child has a dream of divine intervention coming and saving all the children from the terrible sweeper life. They were saved by an Angel who had a bright key/And he opend the coffins and set the all free(Innocence). After being freed from the miserable life, the kids the went down a green plain leaping laughing they run/And wash in a river and shine in the Sun(Innocence). Then naked and white, all their bags left behind(Innocence), the kids were free and clean from their old life and could just be kids again. The angel that had saved them also told Tom if he was good then Hed have God for his father and never want joy(Innocence). If Tom would just accept this was the life he lived, did his job without complaint, and was good he would never need to find outside joy except knowing that he had God as his father. Songs of Experience showed a completely different view on how God had affected the young childs life and how he lives. The kid is completely miserable Crying weep! weep! in notes of woe(Experience). He hates his job so much he is loudly crying on his way home. His parents think they have done me no injury(Experience) because the kid dance(s) and sing(s)(Experience). When the child needs his parents for comfort, the have both left to go pray, while he was off working a terrible job. The kids view of God is one of woe and who makes kids go off to work while the older people go off to praise Him. His distain is show when he says And are gone to praise God and his priest and king, /Who make up a heaven of our misery(Experience). The ones receiving all the praise are the ones who do nothing, except force kids to do filthy work, which they receive no praise for. The kid is working to make more money for the family to make their lives better, but when he returns from work there is no one to greet or comfort him. He is left alone while his parents are off to church praising and praying for God to make their life better

The use of symbolism and simile is used to show the childrens innocence and the misery of their lives as chimneysweepers. Toms hair was shaved, his head looked like a curled lambs back. This was also done so that the soot cannot spoil your white hair. He had white hair and his head looked like a baby lambs back, representing his innocence as a young child. His white hair also shows the reader how young Tom is. After an angel freed the kids, they were naked and white(Innocence). This also shows the childrens innocence by comparison to a young lamb, being naked and white. Toms dream makes use of a simile. Were all of them lockd up in coffins of black(Innocence). The coffins of black are used to show the dirty job of being trapped cleaning chimneys everyday. Dark inside and terrifying for anyone who gets claustrophobic, the chimneys were the childrens coffins.