William Blake Man of the Industrial Revolution Essay Sample
William Blake Man of the Industrial Revolution Essay Sample

William Blake Man of the Industrial Revolution Essay Sample

Available Only on StudyHippo
  • Pages: 7 (1756 words)
  • Published: August 25, 2018
  • Type: Research Paper
View Entire Sample
Text preview

During the 18th and 19th centuries the Industrial Revolution was born in England. With this new growing in industry and capitalist economy business communities recognized the advantage of inexpensive labour. Children were among the most abused work force in that country’s history. William Blake saw this addition of societal unfairness and was overwhelmed so he began to compose about this lip service of societal values that he felt was being carefully hidden from the mainstream. While most considered this ineluctable. child labour was a subject that they did non discourse openly in societal groups.

Blake wanted to alter all of that. As a societal critic. he wrote many verse forms reprobating the lip service between these two universes. for illustration. “The Chimney Sweeper.” “London. ” and “The Garden of Love. ” In “London. ” Bla

...

ke reveals that this lip service has robbed the universe of artlessness and spirit. In the first two lines.

Blake repeats the word “charter’d. ” He uses this repeat to emphasize the mechanical behaviour of the universe around him.The word “charter” has intensions of something that can be sold or hired for money. Blake is linking this thought with the hired rights of Englishmen given three hundred old ages ago by the Crown and ne'er to be taken off.

By utilizing the capable street. and the river Thames. Blake is denoting to the universe that this structural society has even corrupted nature. In the following two lines he remarks on the beaten work forces of society: every face I meet / Marks of failing. Markss of suffering. ”This behaviour is the stealer of the individual’s artlessness as the metropolis of London represents what is

View entire sample
Join StudyHippo to see entire essay

manmade: “In every voice in every prohibition. / the mind-fog handcuffs I hear” : Blake turns to the root of the job in the following stanza as he brings the church and province into the verse form. In literature. the church is normally expressed in white symbolising pureness and frequently in contrast with kids.

These two thoughts form a dual negative image typifying the church when Blake writes about the blackened Church” and the “Chimney sweeper’s call. ” The province has turned her dorsum on the people as the “ soldier’s sigh / Runs in blood down the Palace walls. ” The authorities. in kernel. is incarcerating the kids in this universe of experience.The kids have non had a pick given to them because everything has been mapped out for them: “In every call of every Man. / In every Infant’s call of fright.” Blake rather sardonically critiques the moral codification in London where they sell the kids into harlotry: “How the vernal Harlot’s expletive. blasts the new–born infant’s tear. ” The kids can no longer hold a sense of individualism because of the molestation and disease which have made them all likewise. Through these establishments society has murdered the psyche and liquors of the inexperienced person. London merely knows the cryings of sorrow instead than the cryings of joy: “And blight with pestilences the Marriage hearse. ” It was said that “to depict Blake’s mind in a individual sentence we should state that a head molded in the primeval rational universe which gave rise to the Book of Job so launched into the meaner London life.” ( Hutton 13:164 ) .

Blake is a reformer for

societal equality. He merely desires the unfairness to discontinue which is the idea that prevails throughout the verse form.In “The Garden of Love. ” Blake criticizes the Church for being the instrument of decay on the psyche of the young person. In the first two lines of the verse form.

Blake reveals that upon looking at the Church he sees something new: “I went to the garden of Love. / And saw what I ne'er had seen. ” He so states that the Church has infringed on the young person. non in a well- rounded religious manner. but in a harmful manner: “A Chapel built in the thick.

/ Where I used to play on the green. ” Youth did non hold any strings keeping it back from enjoyment of pleasance. Blake is now explicating that the Church has invaded the inexperienced person. The following stanza begins with the account that even if youth wanted to travel in. “ the Gatess of this Chapel were shut. ” Therefore young person turns off from the Chapel to travel to the Garden of Love. where fond memories are in copiousness symbolized by the “sweet flowers. ”In the following stanza. Blake turns toward the dark deduction once more as young person turns looks upon the Garden and sees “ it filled with Gravess. ” That line has such a strong emotional presence.

A kid is seeking to acquire in touch with his or her interior feeling. The reader can really experience the whiplash of feelings this kid must hold felt when seeing this image of the garden being filled with decease. Death is typifying the insufficiencies of the Church during this

clip. What is most distressing is that Blake was a celebrated spiritual adult male: “Christianity was beautiful to him accepted even more because it satisfied his love of religious beauty. . . ” ( Alexander Gilchrist 13:164 ) .

The following line extends the violent imagination of decease and decay as the “ tomb-stones where flowers should be.” The last two lines complete the scene Blake is depicting: “Priests in black robes / adhering with sweetbriers my joys and desires. ”Pain has invaded the universe of artlessness where love was combined with experience and now a garden of decease replaces it. Blake sought to expose the societal jobs and the immorality that were go oning around him. The church was filled with lip service because these work forces “talked the talk but did non walk the walk. ” One critic explains.

Blake’s poems appear the simplest in the universe. but all of a sudden a deeper note. an allusion to conceal agonies and lesions. . . ” ( Jusserand 5:218 ). Blake is shouting out to the universe for justness. and as another critic writes. “He cried once more and once more nil is unhallowed except things that do non live–lethargies. and inhuman treatments. and timidites. and that denial of imaginativeness.” ( Yeats 13:178 ) .These two verse forms show the mistakes of the Church and province which Blake lived with during his life. In the verse form. “The Chimney Sweeper.” Blake brings this all together in an undismayed effort to be heard. His voice is that of a immature chimney sweeper. and Blake’s message is clear. these kids do non hold society or faith on their

side.

All they have is each other. In the verse form Blake talked about a kid losing his female parent when he was really immature. and his male parent selling him: When my female parent died I was really immature / my male parent sold me.” In the following two lines. Blake uses the word “weep” to typify two significances. The word can be taken literally as either the kid is shouting or it can be translated as if the kid was so immature he could non articulate the word “sweep. ”The following stanza begins to uncover the pureness within the kid as he consoles another kid: Hush.

Tom! ne'er mind it. / the carbon black can non dirty your white hair. ”” In the following four lines. Blake writes about the dream this kid is holding: “ Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! ” Blake is depicting Tom holding a incubus in which all the kids are dead and “Were all of them lock’d up in caskets of black. ” Blake demonstrates his spiritual beliefs non in the Church. but in the spirit of faith. He describes an Angel who has the power to beat the children’s predicament: “ an Angel who had a bright key. / he open’d the caskets & A ; put them free. ” Blake harkens back to his phrase of “a green plain” where the kids would be “…jumping. express joying / and radiance in the Sun. ” He has used this phrase before in other verse forms to typify heaven as he does in “The Chimney Sweeper.” In the following stanza. the Angel from Heaven tells the male child.

. . if he’d be a good male child / he’d have God for his male parent. . . ” Blake is explicating the word of God and that by following his word. the male child will happen peace.

This brings the reader to the last stanza in which Blake emphasizes his spiritual feelings: “ . . . we rose in the dark / forenoon was cold. Tom was happy & A ; warm / do their responsibility they need non fear injury. ” Blake wants to guarantee the reader that by following God’s advice and life without wickedness. a individual will be awarded a better life in Heaven. It is impossible to sabotage Blake’s Hagiographas as those of a individual who needs or wants acknowledgment. One critic is speedy to indicate out that “No adult male so hapless and so vague as Blake appeared in the eyes of his coevals of all time did more good plants in a more baronial and simple spirit” ( Swinburne 5:300 ) . Blake rose to the challenge to expose the societal drosss of his coevals.

He explained in his Hagiographas that the households of these kids were dissemblers because they robbed the kids of their childhood. The parents did non care for the kids or their well-being. They cared merely for their ain predicament and non the hurting or torment they exposed to their kids. A really popular look today is “Just because you father a kid does non do you a male parent raising a kid makes you a male parent. ” This thought of parentage is one of the doctrines Blake is set uping with his poesy.

The authorities was besides hypocritic in nature because it sat back and even exploited the maltreatment. If person does non talk out about the unfairness. it is the same as holding with the unfairness.

The Church. which had been the precaution against unfairness and a sanctuary for the multitudes for the last six hundred old ages. had turned off from its instructions.The Church sank into a hole of corruption in which Blake saw small comfort or compassion.

His verse form helped to relieve the load placed on the persecuted and cure the eyes of those who had been blinded. It has been said of these verse forms by Blake. “they are singular for the crystalline deepness of idea which constitutes true Simplicity–they give us glances of all that is holiest in the Childhood of the World and the Individual” ( Wilkinson 13:163 ) .

Get an explanation on any task
Get unstuck with the help of our AI assistant in seconds
New