Countryside Is Safe For Kids Essay

Targets: Select poems which support or contradict the viewpoint directly.
Targets: Aim to remain focused and concise in your answer throughout the essay.
Thoughts: For this task I created a slightly more detailed plan before completing the essay. I think that I have improved greatly to reach my benchmark on this task.
In Songs of Innocence and Experience, ‘The countryside is a place where children can play safely’ consider the ways in which Blake presents the relationship between the countryside and children in light of this comment. In Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake portrays the countryside as being significant within childhood. The countryside is the land and scenery of a rural area. A rural area is the land which lies outside of cities and towns. Rural areas signify freedom and lack of restriction due to the lack of industrialisation. Blakes’ connection between childhood and the countryside signifies the portrayal of childhood as being the time of freedom and play. Playing safely refers to having the ability to be secure from liability to harm, injury and danger. Blake portrays the countryside as being free from jurisdiction and maintaining an element of purity, complimentary to the innocence that children maintain. However, not all poems portray the countryside and childhood as being picturesque. This is illustrated in poems such as ‘Little Boy Found’ and ‘The Nurses Song.’ In the Innocence poem ‘Laughing Song’, childhood is portrayed as a pleasant experience and children are portrayed as being in harmony with nature. The poem maintains a jaunty rhythm, maintaining an ABAA rhyme scheme. This reflects the upbeat positivity often representative of children. The title of the poem ‘Laughing Song’ has positive connotations of joy, happiness and an element of freedom and liberty often associated with children. The element of ‘song’ is also reflected throughout the poem through the rhythmic and melodic structure. Blake uses the literary technique of transferred epithets and personification in order to signify the harmony that children have with the countryside. This is illustrated “When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy.” The colour ‘green’ often connotes fresh, new life and nature representing the element of the surrounding countryside. Blake then uses emotive language with “voice of joy” portraying the happiness and delight that children stereotypically maintain during childhood. Blake uses personification in order to demonstrate the sheer innocence of ‘Mary’, ‘Susan’ and ‘Emily’. The scene is represented as a childhood that is not tainted by any external or impure forces. Childhood innocence is emphasised by the way in which Blake conveys the girls’ laughter as “Ha, Ha, He”. This poetic technique ensures that the laughter remains resonant even after the poem has finished. The use of repetition of this line along with “laugh”, “joy”, “merry” and “sweet” all emphasise the sheer purity and innocence that is evident in the countryside. The unity between the “painted birds” and the child speaker at “our table” embodies the harmonic relationship between nature and children, an idea that has extended throughout the poem where the children, animals and the landscape are all interconnected. Expanding upon this idea of nature and potentially romantic childhood, Blake conveys another technique common in Romantic writing, where nature is personified and used to reflect human feeling through the use of pathetic fallacy. Blake uses this technique when he describes the “air does laugh with our merry wit// And the green hills laughs with the noise”. However, it is not only nature that is “laughing”, as the children in the song are also joyous and revelling in the rural scene. Blake conveys the idea that children should be kept as children rather than moulded in young adults, is highly significant as he suggests that children should remain untainted or unspoilt for as long as possible, as when innocence is lost it will be replaced by the view of experience. Blake therefore, is highlighting the purity of innocence and childhood being in harmony with nature as well as portraying childhood in many aspects. Another poem that portrays childhood and the countryside as being interconnected is the innocence poem “Nurse’s song.” Blake once again uses an upbeat jolly rhythm which is expressed through the ABCB rhyme scheme. The use of internal rhyme upon lines such as “laughing is heard on the hill” “And everything else is still” conveys a nursery rhyme styled poem connecting the element of childhood with the surrounding nature. The title of the poem, “Nurses Song” conveys images of the caring and nurturing capacity within human beings. The Nurse can be used to protect the freedom of those whom are carefree, innocent and vulnerable, as does the ‘song’ once again reiterates the element of childhood as singing is often a quality of a happy child. The opening line, “…voices of children are heard on the green” signifies the complete freedom that the children had in the countryside. The ‘green’ represents the open fields of the rural land, and the aspect of ‘voices of children are heard’ signifies the multitude of children playing freely out in the open. This supports the claim that ‘The countryside is a place where children can play safely’, as no adults are mentioned to be watching over the children. This proposes that no supervision was required whilst the children played out in the countryside. Blake portrays the children to be “…laughing is heard on the hill.” This signifies that the children are upon higher ground potentially indicating that mankind has superiority over nature. However, towards the end of the poem, the children are told to “go home to bed.” This imperative statement signifies that the children may have more freedom during certain periods of time, however, nature is superior as it completely free from restriction. Blake then uses the literary technique of internal sibilance in which he describes the Nurse’s “heart is at rest within my breast// and everything else is still.” The suggestion of ones ‘heart at rest’ implies the simplicity of the moment and lack of excitement. The internal use of sibilance signifies the soft and meek element of childhood whilst also embodying the childlike action of whispering. The use of sibilance also represents the soft aspect of nature such as the soft winds or running streams, reinforcing the interconnectivity of childhood and nature. Blake also uses a sense of the pastoral in order to accentuate the relationship between childhood and the countryside. Blake describes the “hills are cover’d with sheep”. Not only does this reflect the idea that nature is flourishing; signifying the ever growing element of new life, but the imagery conveyed by this description suggests that this is a metaphor for the ‘sheep’ representing snow, which not only suggests the seasonal change but also refers to the change from innocence to experience in a child’s life. Blake then uses emotive language through the inclusion of the tricolon; “The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh’d// and all the hills echoed.” The use of the tricolon signifies the childlike characteristics along with the emphasis between each verb signifying how distanced the hills were. As the “hills echoed” this confirms the idea of the relationship between childhood and the countryside, as the landscape is mimicking the actions of the children. However, not all poems in ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ portray the countryside as ‘a place in which children can play safely.’ This is illustrated greatly in the poem ‘The little boy lost.’ The short poem of ‘The little boy lost’ is presented featuring an erratic rhyme scheme of ABCD ABCB which is used to create the iambic pentameter form. Due to the inclusion of the literary technique of near rhyme, this creates a tone of discomfort and fear; two emotions that the boy within the poem would have also experienced toward his father. The title “The little boy lost” portrays the boy as being of little significance due to the lack of being named along with the adjective ‘little’ which connotes something small, inferior and of minute existence. The opening line features both repetition and the use of a rhetorical question, emphasising the gloominess of the situation. The use of repetition in which the boy cries “Father! Father! Where are you going?” emphasises the fearfulness of the child as he pleas for his father to continue to guide him. The use of the exclamation marks also reaffirm the desperation of the child as his father continues to walk away from him. As the boy continues to plea, “O do not walk so fast// Or else I shall be lost” he begins to use imperative language in the hope that his father will respond. The little boy’s explanation of his plea “Or else I shall be lost” suggests two reasons; The first being that he would be physically lost out in the countryside, and the second being that he will become spiritually lost potentially leaving him to be lead astray from the path of righteousness. Blake potentially uses the little boy to represent the human soul or spirit, seeking God in a sin-wracked world that seems to obliterate the signs of Gods very existence. As the boy is left behind, Blake suggests that earthly religious practices or institutions cannot lead the soul to the truth. This is indicated through the image of the little boy frantically following the ‘father’ of the world, to become more lost than if he was to never had have followed him to begin with. Another poem that also contradicts the relationship between childhood and nature being safe is “The little black boy.” The poem is in the form of a quatrain, while the stanzas of pentameter feature the rhyming ABAB structure. The title “The little black boy” instantly remind the reader of the context in which the poem was written; that being, the divide in society at the time between those fighting the institutional racism and the abolishment of the slave trade. This sets the sad and mundane tone of the poem that is to progress further. Within the title Blake includes the colour ‘black’ which often maintains connotations of darkness and negativity which is to be juxtaposed throughout the poem. The symmetrical structure of the poem also reinforces the divide between ‘Black’s and White’s’ as it creates the image of reflection between the two. Blake builds the poem upon the imagery of light and dark. The contrast between the two begins in the first stanza when the little boy believes that his black skin and the whiteness of his soul lends poignancy to the misunderstanding of himself. Blake describes the boy as being “black as if bereav’d of light.” The statement “bereav’d of light” signifies a lack or loss of faith that he is equal the white boy due to the darkness of his skin. However, this is juxtaposed by the boy’s claim of “my soul is white.” The colour ‘white’ often connotes purity and innocence, demonstrating that the little boy believes that he is spiritually pure. Blake uses the pastoral convention of a shepherd; who features in the form of his mother, in which he informs that reader that “My mother taught me underneath a tree.” The image of a mother and child sitting beneath the tree signifies both the literal and metaphorically strong relationship between childhood and the countryside. Another element of the pastoral; religion, is used by Blake in order to strengthen the relationship between childhood and nature. The ‘tree’ maintains connotations of ‘The Garden of Eden’s tree of life.’ This signifies that childhood must remain connected with nature as nature can provide a source of information, which could possess the means to either lead the child astray or allow them to maintain their innocence. Blake informs the reader that these sessions would occur “before the heat of day.” This signifies that no matter how connected children are with nature, they too shall also feel the stresses as the day progresses. Furthermore, as the poem progresses, Blake portrays nature as being the means to reunite human beings. This is illustrated through “…like a shady grove.” The literal image of the black boy shading the white boy indicates that even a child can sacrifice himself for the benefit of another; although, the black boy maintains more natural protection due to the melanin in his skin, of which he is unaware of. This simple action of self-sacrifice is to be rewarded by God in which within “[God’s] golden tent like lambs rejoice” those who sacrifice themselves for good intention shall be rewarded in Heaven. The description of “lambs rejoice” indicates that nature is in harmony with the children, and the verb ‘rejoice’ connote celebrations which would indirectly take place upon the countryside.
To conclude, Blake portrays the countryside as being free from jurisdiction and maintaining an element of purity, complimentary to the innocence that children maintain before having to enter the world of experience. However, Blake uses poems such as ‘The little boy lost’ and ‘The little black boy’ to portray nature and religion to not always be in balance with childhood. This is signified through many literary techniques such as near rhyme, repetition and strategically placed diction.