Thursday, March 19, 2009

Sweeping and Weeping (Not Cinderella)

The opposite of reason is usually emotion, but Blake uses vivid imagery in his poetry that create pictures in readers' minds mind making them use imagination to form a conclusion. Blake did have the power to enact social change by appealing to the sensitivity readers tend to have for situations involving peverty and child labor. Had he used reason, this poem would have still attracted peoples attention. An example of using reason instead of imagination would have been stating how many hours a day children had to work and what conditions they were in. Imagination is necessary to imagine a child’s cry of “‘weep ‘weep ‘weep” or a child’s resentment he has towards his parents who made him work. Blake was trying to write to all people of all social classes so he could create something that everyone could agree needed political recognition and change, such as child labor laws. Coming from the upper class himself, he tends to use many clichés to represent what he thinks a suffering child would feel. It isn’t a fault of his poetry because he at least had the knowledge to be aware these problems were occurring and needed to be fixed. The poems have two versions; one from the Songs of Innocence and one from the Songs of Experience. Innocence is usually associated with naivety and experience tends to gain wisdom. We can gather that the child chimney sweeper who is angry at his parents in the “Songs of Experience” is correct in his reasoning and the child who is “innocent” has a lot to learn about the real world for he isn’t angry with his parents. The innocent child however, could also be admired for being more hopeful even in a time of sorrow while the “experienced” child is more cynical and that doesn’t help in life either. Blake tried to make people feel sympathy for these children while still hoping they would realize hope can be found no matter what situation you’re in but don’t ever let your guard down too much and seem weak.


The Parliament transcript was included in the textbook as way to get the perspective of a child who really went through these tough times Blake tried to describe but never really lived. It was short and to the point but still got emotion out of its readers because the situation is upsetting no matter how it is presented. It was a bit too dry and emotionless and I didn’t understand why the child speaking didn’t express true sorrow. It changes the way I read both of Blake’s interpretations because the real children who went through this obviously coped with it by suppressing their emotions and the one from the transcript wouldn’t have agreed with Blake’s overly dramatized crying and angry sentiments. Maybe the child was shy due to the situation he was put in and didn’t want to show what he really felt. I believe all the texts get a reaction out of their audiences.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with your opinions about Blake's usage of imagery. I also think he used the sympathy factor to attract people's attention and enact for social change. I admire your usage of excerpts ('weep, weep, weep') from the poem to represent Blake's imagery.

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