Chimney Sweeper Analysis
In William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience are two writings titled "The Chimney Sweeper." These writings convey one of Blake's basic ideas by displaying contradictory mind frames between the two; the child in the Innocence version shows a very natural and hopeful temperament, while in Experience the child's positive outlook has been manufactured to fit social norms. For instance, in the Innocence version "little Tom Dacre" (another young chimney sweeper) has
" The child's further exposure to the world has given him a socially typical, cynical outlook. "The child and Tom find complacency in thinking as long as they do their jobs that everything will work out for the best in the end; their hopeful outlook is a coping agent for their hazardous jobs. Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm. a dream in which an angel tells him, "if he'd be a good boy/ He'd have God for his father & never want joy. "The heavenly promise in Innocence has dwindled to a harsh, bitter revelation. The same god that the child once aspired to live happily with is the same god that has created the paradoxical heaven of misery. " In the last stanza, Blake presents the outcome of the dream:"And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the darkAnd got with our bags & our brushes to work. Conversely, in Songs of Experience the child's hopeful outlook turns out to be his own demise; his parents were unable to see his pain, clothing him in "the clothes of death" and teaching him "to sing the notes of woe. The child's "manufactured" disposition is even more present in the last stanza, with Blake writing: "And because I am happy, & dance & 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.
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