William Blake’s ‘The Chimney Sweeper’: Social Criticism and Literary Analysis
William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper”: Analysis and Context
This analysis focuses on William Blake’s powerful poem, “The Chimney Sweeper,” which appears in his collection Songs of Experience (1794).
Biography of William Blake (1757–1827)
William Blake was a famous poet, painter, and engraver of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Born in London on November 28, 1757, he displayed artistic talent from an early age. In 1794, Blake published Songs of Experience, which includes the famous poem “The Tiger.”
In 1800, Blake moved to Sussex. Three years later, he was involved in a fight with a soldier named John Schofield, who entered his garden. Blake was tried for sedition—a serious charge—but he was acquitted and returned with his wife to London. Between 1804 and 1810, William Blake wrote and illustrated his work Milton, a poem in two books. In 1820, Blake painted The Goblin. He died on August 12, 1827.
Blake’s Radicalism and Philosophy
Blake was a radical and an anti-authority figure, and his radicalism intensified during the years leading up to the French Revolution. He disapproved of:
- Enlightenment Rationalism
- Institutionalized religion
- The tradition of marriage in its conventional, legal, and social form
Social Context and Themes in the Poem
“The Chimney Sweeper” reflects how children’s lives were destroyed by the actions of adults, including family, government, and the Church of England. In 18th-century England, most orphaned children were sold to master-sweepers, who were supposedly in charge of caring for them. Their innocence was stolen by society, forcing them to live a “black” life covered in soot and facing a premature death. Play and freedom existed only in their dreams.
The poem reflects the life of a child who is four or five years old, forced to climb chimneys and clean the flues. The British boy, probably homeless, has already lost his childhood, freedom, and innocence. The poem is divided into six stanzas.
Stanza-by-Stanza Analysis
Stanza 1: Loss and Sale
In the first stanza, a chimney sweeper tells us that his mother died and his father sold him because he was very thin and small, giving him the ability to clean soot. The line, “and my father sold me while yet my tongue could scarcely cry,” uses metonymy. The repetition of “weep! weep! weep! weep!” represents the child’s cry, which sounds like the sweeper’s call.
Stanza 2: Tom Dacre and Innocence
In the second stanza, the speaker introduces another sweeper named Tom Dacre. Tom is compared to an innocent animal, described as having hair “that curled like a lamb’s back,” emphasizing their shared innocence. The color black of the soot is contrasted with their naturally white hair.
Stanzas 3-5: Dreams, Deliverance, and Death
The third stanza starts with a caesura in the first line, followed by an enjambment: “and that very night, / As Tom was a-sleeping.” The stanza reveals that thousands of sweepers work in the same horrific conditions. The stanza ends with the metaphor of “coffins,” meaning that their current state of affairs ensures they will die young as sweepers.
The fourth and fifth stanzas make reference to Jesus, who gives St. Peter the keys to heaven. This imagery is compared with the chimney sweepers who are locked in the metaphorical coffins and need to be free; they are dreaming of deliverance. The final stanza explains how Tom and the rest of the sweepers do their duty, but the speaker questions whether their parents or the government fulfill theirs.
Poetic Structure and Blake’s Radicalism
The poem utilizes a mixture of anapestic and iambic meter. In each stanza, the first and second lines rhyme, forming a couplet. The rhyme becomes less regular toward the end of the poem, using words like “dark” and “work,” and “harm” and “warm,” which constitute a slant rhyme or half rhyme.
As a conclusion, William Blake never tired of criticizing the Industrial Revolution that took place during the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. He attacked all the institutions that controlled and tyrannized people. He was highly critical of authority, family, government, and the Church of England—practically criticizing everyone. He also held unorthodox religious views, believing deeply in humanity. He famously stated:
“Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to human existence; without contraries there is no progression.”