CHIMENY SWEEPER

Blaming Society in William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” William Blake, in his poem “Chimney Sweeper” tries to tell story of a boy that is affected by poverty and corruption. Through Songs of Innocence, Blake makes the world know about the situation of children in his time working as chimney sweepers. Through the eyes of children, the speaker asserts that they can be set free from the evils of society through hope, joy, and cheer that every child has towards God. The speaker is against society, government, and family who give children so much pain and force them to work as slaves. Blake expresses his feelings in the Songs of Innocence by showing sympathy towards innocent children that are treated with cruelty. Society exploits, abuses and takes advantage of the children. The Songs of Innocence shows how society, specifically the father, the church and the chimney sweeping industry is to blame for the boy’s unhealthy condition and how the boy describes how pain and sorrow are part of his everyday life.
In the first stanza of the Songs of Innocence, the speaker makes a statement on the boy’s painful situation because he is not with his parents. It is sad and heartbreaking for that boy, who at a young age, instead of being with parents enjoying life is emotionally challenged with a number of factors like getting sold away by his father and family, poverty, and he could not even speak and death of his mother. The speaker expresses his feeling for boy in earlier lines of the poem: “When my mother died I was very young / And my father sold me While yet my tongue” (1-2). The speaker blames the boy’s father who sold his son to earn some money and now this injured child from the heart replies to this evil and cruel father with tears in his eyes, who cleans “chimney “ in “soot” and dust and also not given a proper place to sleep: “ Could scarcely cry ‘Weep! ‘Weep! ‘Weep! ‘Weep! ‘/ So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep” (3-4). The speaker attacks the father