The Chimney Sweeper: When My Mother Died I Was Very Young: A Poetry Essay [PDF]

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Name: Theresia Laras Cantika Putri Class: XI C Student Number: 22 A Poetry Essay The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young 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 curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, 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, & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;



And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened 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. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm; So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm. Answer the seven questions: 1. Who is the speaker? The speaker poem is a child who was sold by his father to work as a chimney sweep after his mother died when he was a child. 2. Who is the audience? The specific audience for this poem is for parents who sell their children for work and people who do not care about the children being employed. 3. What is the main subject of the poem? The speakers describe how exploited children suffer and in the end they accept the reality. At first they didn't like the job, then after Tom Druce got the dream they finally could accept reality but did not lose hope of feeling freedom. 4. Does the poem belong to genre? This poetry belongs to the genre of criticism. Because of this, William Blake's poetry wanted to criticize parents and society at that time who did not care about children. 5. What are the form and meter of the poem? The meter used in the poem is the iambic pentameter where in the poem there are 5 iambs on each line. Then the rhyme used is AABB, this rhyme is included in the Couplet type. 6. What figures of speech are use in the poem? Methapor : There is one metaphor used in the first line of the last stanza. “And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark” where ‘dark’ is the metaphor of miserable life of the chimney sweeping children. Simile : “That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said”, the poet compares Tom’s hair with lamb wool. 7. What were the poet’s life and time like? He was born in Soho, London and lived his whole life there. Blake's ambition lies not in poetry but in painting as well. when attending the Royal Academy William Blake was known to question the aesthetic doctrine of his president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, it



made him drop out of school. William Blake wanted to bring about change both in social order and in the human mind. In 1789, he published Songs of Innocence which contained profound expressions of adult expression and repression. His long list of works shows the energy and drive to achieve his hopes Decide your argument! 1. Is there an interesting relationship between the form of the poem and its meaning? William Blake uses various figurative languages such as simile, metaphor, and symbolism to further clarify the contents of the poem about the exploitation of children and human values.



Your Essay Title The Chimney Sweeper is a poem by William Blake published in Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1794. The Chimney Sweeper is a criticism genre poetry and uses AABB rhyme schemes, this poem consists of six stanzas, each of which consists of 4 lines. This poem tells the events that happened to children at that time. Between the 18th and 19th centuries in England there was a lot of exploitation of young children. They are being sold to sweep chimneys. These children were oppressed and not socially accepted at that time. My first impression when I read "The Chimney Sweeper" is an interesting poem because in verse one it has been opened with a touching sentence that makes me feel sad and it turns out that this poem has a meaningful moral message. In the poem "The Chimney Sweeper" William Blakes wants to convey two important themes about the exploitation of children and human values. William Blake uses simile, metaphor, symbolism, assonance and allitration to further clarify the two themes. The first and second stanza emphasize the theme of child exploitation. At the beginning, it was described how the speaker experienced a gloomy little boy. His mother died when he was a child and his father sold him to work as a chimney sweep. Assonance's use of "'weep!' Weep! 'Weep!' Weep!" would like to emphasize the depressed state of the speaker and the fact that at that time he had not yet learned how to cry and speak so that he could not pronounce "sweep" properly, this illustrates that his childhood was taken away because he had to work at a very young age. In the fourth line "So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep", shows the peak of the sufferer's suffering due to making soot as a comfortable bed, this is emphasized on the use of allitations such as the words sweep, soot and sleep. In the second stanza, William Blake wants to show the innocence of children so that they can be exploited easily. William Blake



uses the simile “That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said” which compares Tom Dacre's white hair to a lamb defined as a symbol of innocence. In the third to last stanza William Blake wants to highlight the theme of humanity. "That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jac" the sentence shows that it is not only the speakers who are the chimney sweepers but thousands of people also suffer the same fate. In third stanza "Were all of them locked up in coffins of black" uses a symbolism coffins of black, which indicates that the chimney sweep is not free and dangerous because there is a risk of death from inhaling soot. The chimney sweepers crave freedom from the shackles of slavery and exploitation, this is clearly seen in fourth stanza in Tom Dacre's dream, which contains the symbolism of "green plain" which is defined as freedom and prosperity. But at the end of the poem, the freedom that was added could not be realized, the proof is "And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark ”, rose dark in the sentence is a metaphor of the life of a chimney sweep that remains messy. In the end the chimney sweepers could only accept the reality of life. The conclusion is that around the 18th to 19th centuries in London there were many cases of young children being exploited for work, even though these children should have lived their childhood by playing, learning and getting love from their parents. This poem also shows that in ancient times, people viewed children as the most easily exploited and profitable human beings so that society and even their parents did not care about the child's condition. the poem "The Chimney sweeper" by William Blakes, wants to make people aware of the condition of children by prohibiting children from working as chimney sweepers and he wants to change the wrong way of seeing society