英国文学_英国文学部分
英国文学由刀豆文库小编整理，希望给你工作、学习、生活带来方便，猜你可能喜欢“英国文学部分”。
Analysis of the Chimney Sweeper
The Chimney Sweeper is the title of two poems by William Blake,published in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794.The poem, „The Chimney Sweeper‟ is set against the dark background of child labor that was well-known in England in the late 18th and 19th Century”.At the age of four and five, boys were sold to clean chimneys due to their small size.These children were oppreed,and had a diminutive existence that was socially acceptable at the time.In the earlier poem, a young chimney sweeper recounts a dream had by one of his fellows, in which an angel rescues the boys from coffins and takes them to a sunny meadow;in the later poem, an apparently adult speaker encounters a child chimney sweeper abandoned in the snow while his parents are at church.Both the two poems protest the living conditions, working conditions,and the overall treatment of young chimney sweeps in the cities of England.In Songs of Innocence, Blake features in “The Chimney Sweeper” innocence represented by the speaker(the slightly older chimney sweep), Tom, and all the other sweeps.This innocence is exploited and oppreed, and those who are being exploited are unaware of the oppreion.The narrator is a chimney sweep whose mother died and was sold by his father at a very young age, as implied by the lines “And my fathers sold me while yet my tongue / could scarcely cry „weep
weep weep weep!‟”.The poem concludes with the narrator and his firm belief that if they are obedient and do their duty, all will be well.This last idea expreed emphasizes that he is in the state of innocence and is unaware that he is a victim.In Songs of Experience, the child in “The Chimney Sweeper” understands that he is a victim and tells the observer who sees the “little black thing” in the snow weeping.Unlike the boy in Innocence, both parents of this child are living and have gone to the church to pray, an overt criticism of the Church of England since chimney sweepers were not welcome in church.The boy understands his circumstances and sees no hope of freedom from his oppreion.Instead of believing that obedience will prevent punishment, he perceives his current circumstance as a punishment for being happy with his childhood.Also, he does not seem to endorse the Christian idea of having joy in the midst of adversity;he sees little if any reason to be happy in his miserable predicament.In fact, the God that his parents praise seems as cruel as others who allow children to be mistreated in such a way.Although the viewpoints of each poem are different, both show plight of the majority of the chimney sweepers in the cities of England, and while one endorses hope and the other bitterne, the reader must acknowledge that something needs to be done to improve life for these children.
