LITERARY STUDIES

Analysis of William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper"

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"

So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

 

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head

That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,

"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,

You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

 

And so he was quiet, & that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!

That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,

Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

 

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,

And he opened the coffins & set them all free;

Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,

And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

 

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,

They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.

And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,

He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

 

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark

And got with our bags & our brushes to work.

Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;

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

 

William Blake wrote poetry against child labour. He thought that this phenomenon was one of the biggest atrocities of industrialization. For him, a child who has to work grows into a corrupted adult. The poem in hand is presented in the voice of a little boy who cleans chimneys with other children.

In the first stanza the speaker explains the tragic living conditions he has to experience as a young child hardly able to speak and who is sold by his father because he was an orphan. In the next stanza he soothes his friend Tom Dacre whose hair was shaved against his will. The two stanzas show the struggles and pains of the children who were living away from their families, often orphans and exploited.

The third stanza highlights the principle of imagination using the dream to compare the chimney to a black coffin that brings death to the children. The coffin is opened by an angel that sends the children to paradise where they are happy. Paradise is presented in a plain and mountain and sky (the landscape). After the dream Tom wakes up happy and warm and is ready to go to work. Apart from the initial theme which is child labor, the poem in hand includes the principle of childhood innocence and the reflection of human nature in the natural world. The children find peace and happiness and the innocence of the angel in heaven. The landscape also represents freedom and escape from the industrial city where the children have to clean chimneys. Finally, the poem also includes the aspect of imagination which is the key to freedom in this dream.