Posting my IB English HL essay - Writing Wednesday

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, 

I have a lot of essays to get through so I thought I would upload another one today. Today, I am posting my IB English Higher Level essay that I wrote as part of my extensive coursework for the International Baccalaureate. Here I compare William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience poems, whilst answering the question, How does Blake influence the reader’s perspective of children in Songs of Innocence and Experience? I hope you enjoy! 😀💜

How does Blake influence the reader’s perspective of children in Songs of Innocence and Experience?

 Childhood is an unforgettable, finite time period, that is equally characterised by innocence, joy, and sadness.  Many poets have been able to communicate the beauty of childhood through their bodies of work. However, there was no other poet who expressed as much admiration for children as much as the poet William Blake. Like many poets of his time, Blake was most influenced by the Industrial Revolution, as it was a time period that focused on wealth over nature and innocence, the direct antithesis of many romantic narratives at the time. During the Industrial Revolution, Blake believed that the state was objectifying children and the Church of England was endorsing child labour. Although Blake’s poems are centred around a range of social issues, the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience poems largely centre themselves around the topics of child labour and child abuse, to inform readers about the plight of working-class children, which was relevant to his authentic audience (Forward, 2014). Thus, in this essay I will be exploring Blake’s literary and poetic devices and how they persuade Blake’s readers to change their perspective of children.

 In Blake’s Songs of Innocence poem, “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake uses the persona of a young chimney sweeper, speaking in first-person perspective, to connect his readers to the challenges that they might face. For example, in the first line of the poem, “When my mother died, I was very young” Blake uses the pronouns “my” and “I” to embody the perspective of the chimney sweeper, allowing the readers to read through the eyes of the victim, who Blake is becoming as the speaker. The verb “died” and the noun “young” exemplifies Blake’s dichotomy between innocence and experience, enabling the reader to witness the feeling of struggle in conjunction with the youthful innocence of the child. The use of sibilance in “So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep” increases the musicality of the sentence, which allows the reader to focus in on the poor conditions that the chimney sweeper is made to sleep in, which creates a sense of empathy and invokes a humanistic connection between the reader and the speaker. The metaphor “locked up in coffins of black,” is used to describe the chimney sweepers who die attempting to sweep large, industrialised chimneys. This in conjunction with the line “And by came an angel, who had a bright key”, alludes to the power of the divine, showing readers that the angel has the power to free the chimney sweepers from their treacherous work or their sins. Blake utilises the adjectives “naked” and “white” to encompass the idea that the chimney sweepers will be cleaned from the soot on their bodies as they transcend into heaven, alluding to the idea of baptism. The hyperbolised nature of this message suggests that this idea of perpetual freedom, is being sold to young children as a lie, communicating to the reader that the children have become victims of a religious rhetoric which has allowed the church and the state to take advantage of children. Blake uses a sarcastic diction in last line of the poem “So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm,” to ridicule the mantra that labour will grant the chimney sweepers a sense of security. During Blake’s generation, people would have largely viewed children from the working-class as worthless, cheap labour. Blake can influence reader’s opinion of children by representing them as innocent individuals who are forced into the injustices of the state.

 Moreover, in Blake’s Songs of Experience poem, “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake also highlights the hypocrisy of the parents, who are not taking up the burden of the financial hardship and are instead choosing to neglect their child by forcing them to take up dangerous work. This allows the readers, who might be taking part in similar actions, to self-reflect and change their perspective of children. In the first line of the poem, “A little black thing in the snow,” Blake uses the noun “thing” and the diminutive adjective “little,” to objectify and dehumanise the chimney sweeper to portray them as inferior. Additionally, Blake also uses the adjective “black,” which represents the soot on the child’s body, in direct contrast to the innocence displayed by the colour “white” in the Songs of Innocence poem, to portray the chimney sweeper as sinful and worthless. During the Industrial Revolution, when there was an influx of child labour, working class children began to be heavily commodified by the state and not treated as human beings (Griffin, 2014). In the middle of the poem, Blake includes a Volta through the change in rhyme scheme from a couplet to an alternate rhyme, which represents the change in perspective from adult to child, to show how the adult’s neglect are affecting the chimney sweeper. In the sentence “They clothed me in the clothes of death,” the “clothes of death” becomes the metaphor for the dangerous forms of labour that the child is forced to endure as a chimney sweeper. The lack of control that the child has over their actions, as they are being forcefully clothed by their parents, shows that children are vulnerable to the effects of child labour. Furthermore, in the last line of the poem, “Who make up a heaven of our misery,” Blake suggests to readers that the church is creating the land of the destitute and benefitting from child labour. In his Songs of Innocence poem, Blake shows that it is the readers whose chimneys are being swept, suggesting that it is the reader’s responsibility to take a stand against child labour. In this poem Blake builds upon this idea, persuading readers to consider the rights and civil liberties of children.

 Similar to “The Chimney Sweeper” Songs of Experience poem, Blake applies glorified religious imagery to the text of “Holy Thursday” Songs of Innocence, to highlight the hypocrisy of the church’s attitude towards children. The main duty of the Church of England was to aid and be inclusive towards vulnerable working-class children. However, Blake’s authorial choices in “Holy Thursday,” expose some of the hidden injustices of the church. For example, in the first line of the poem, “their innocent faces clean,” Blake describes the children as looking presentable whilst entering St Paul's Cathedral for the Ascension Day service, initially portraying a sense of innocence and decency about the religious ceremony. However, compared to the chimney sweeper in Blake's Songs of Experience poem, the faces of these working-class children are cleaned to make sure that they look presentable for the ceremony. Additionally, the inclusion of the colours “red, and blue, and green” to describe the children, manifests a sense of hyperbolised co-ordination. This implies that the church has a façade, hiding the injustices of poverty instead of being honest and dutiful in aiding vulnerable working-class children. Blake also describes the working-class children in the poem with a sense of purity. For instance, the line “but multitudes of lambs,” is an allusion to Christ as Jesus is the lamb of God, who sacrificed his life for the sins of humanity. Lambs are typically sacrificial animals in the Christian faith and by comparing the children to the lambs, Blake’s suggesting that the church thinks they are disposable. The “multitudes” of innocent lambs, suggests that Blake is using this allusion to express the large-scale oppression that is inflicted on these innocent children. “The Chimney Sweeper” Songs of Innocence speaks of a list of young children such as “Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack” who die sweeping chimneys. By highlighting the implications of the church’s actions, Blake is giving a voice to the children who are being oppressed. “The hum of the multitudes” is an onomatopoeia, reflecting the children’s cries, calling out to the adults for help. This may be a direct call to action from Blake to persuade readers to change their behaviour. Here, readers can begin to understand that children are individuals that need to be protected instead of oppressed by institutions like the Church.

 In his poems, Blake aimed to replicate the actions of the state and the church to make his readers, who were ignorant of their power, aware of their influence. The Chimney Sweeper poems focused on the corrupt nature of the state and the church and how this was damaging the lives of working-class children. Blake’s Holy Thursday poem focused on the hypocrisy of the church and how the church was hindering the lives of working-class children, instead of helping them. By making readers aware of their personal impact through exposing their actions, Blake could effectively highlight the suffering of working-class children, proving to people that children were vulnerable and emotive human beings who were made to endure unnecessary adversity. This ultimately influences readers perspective of children in a positive way.

Bibliography:

Blake, Songs of Innocence: The Chimney Sweeper:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43653/the-chimney-sweeper-a-little-black-thing-among-the-snow

Blake, Songs of Experience: The Chimney Sweeper:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43654/the-chimney-sweeper-when-my-mother-died-i-was-very-young

Blake, Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43661/holy-thursday-twas-on-a-holy-thursday-their-innocent-faces-clean

Forward, The British Library, The Romantics, 15th May 2014, https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics

Griffin, The British Library, Child Labour, 15th May 2014,

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/child-labour

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