A few weeks ago we were asked to write an essay about a poem. We were given a book of poems and had to choose one and write an essay. This is the poem and my essay. I missed the class where we briefly discussed what to include so I had to think back to my Year 11 English Literature class. I happened to google chimney sweep to find some more details and came across this essay. It’s very interesting and I suspect written at university level rather than high school, it certainly shows me how much I have to learn.
The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake
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 curl’d llke a lamb’s back. was shav’d: 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 or Jack.
Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black.
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open’d 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.
Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.
The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake is a poem of different layers. The top layer is that of a child, a chimney sweep, who has no control over his life. Then there are various layers underneath talking about religion and society.
Chimney Sweeps were children, small children and were sold by their parents for money as they often didn’t have enough for the whole family to survive. These Chimney Sweeps did backbreaking work from as young as five years old, suffered illhealth, black skin from the soot and faced the prospect of suffocation in the chimney.
The first stanza discusses how the narrator’s mother died and his father sold him, it also mentions the age of the child by saying how he couldn’t talk properly and couldn’t even say the words he’d need to shout out in the streets “sweep”, he could barely say “weep”, a contraction of the word “sweep”.
Also in the first stanza it is stated that he sweeps other people’s chimneys indicating he owns nothing of his own and cannot wash so the soot stays on his skin. He has no control over his life as he has no belongings and he is not able to get the soot off his skin. This is made more clear in the second stanza when Tom Dacre has his head shaved, he has not asked to have this happen, it is something that happens to all sweeps. The narrator tries to comfort him by telling him that at least the soot cannot spoil Tom’s white hair, being able to comfort others is almost the only control these boys have over their lives.
In the third, fourth and fifth stanzas we see another way the boys have control. They can dream at night while asleep. This dream is full of whiteness, brightness and happy things. The key is bright and Angels are generally thought of as bright and white. There is a green plain, a river and they are so bright after washing in the river they shine in the sun. The clouds and wind are also considering bright symbols.
The final stanza shows the boys waking up before dawn, “in the dark” and getting their work accoutrements together to go to work. In the final line there is an instance of them having control over their lives as they’ll be fine if they do what they’re told to do.
This poem could also be construed as an indictment on society of the time. We have these very little children who can’t even speak properly being sold by their parents, abandoned by them and put to work at far too young an age. We are told they are young by their inability to speak the word “sweep” or even the word “weep”. Their heads are shaved and they have very little control over their lives. They are put into dangerous situations, hence the allusions to coffins of black in the third stanza and coffins in the fourth stanza. The coffins of black are an analogy to chimneys, as mentioned above children often died in the chimney if the soot overcame and suffocated them. Except in their dreams, these children only knew hard work and colourless things as referenced by the word soot in the first and second stanzas, black in the third stanza and dark in the final stanza. They could only dream or wish for bright things such as green plains, running, laughter, a river and sunshine all mentioned in the fourth stanza and white clouds and wind in the fifth stanza. In the final stanza we see how these children have to get up while it’s still dark, so before dawn, pick up their heavy bags and brushes and work. The morning is cold and they are enjoined to work hard or they’ll receive punishment. Society still lets children be hit by adults and this shows how society has to make a lot of changes.
One final layer is religious. There are so many instances of religion in this poem. There’s the lamb as mentioned in the second stanza. Jesus has often been seen as a sacrificial lamb and I do wonder if Blake is trying to point out that these boys are being sacrificed. In the third and fourth stanzas we have the image of thousands of black coffins being opened by an Angel which could be the resurrection of the dead at the end of days. In the third stanza we’re told the coffins are black and they could be the chimneys the children have died in, so we could be being told that all the children who died in the chimneys will still be resurrected. The final two lines of the fifth stanza and the last line of the final stanza indicate what the church has been trying to tell us for a long time that we have to do what we’re told and we will be accepted by God and everything will be fine.
Basically there are three main layers to this poem. One about the children, for the children telling us how they have no control over their lives. The second one is a major indictment on society and how they treated young boys at that time. The third is a religious allegory.
