The Chimney Sweeper
William Blake poem ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ reveals the traumatic fate of a poor chimneysweeper whose mother died when he was very young. So, the father sold the lad (either because of the fact that he could not take care of him or for greed). It’s the poet’s imaginary quality that has clearly made the poem a blend between a wonderful dream and the actual reality of life. Besides this illustration between the realistic and picture perfect world the poem also beautifully explicates the joy and pain, laughter and tears that one comes across. This poem shows that the children are very optimistic as they have a positive approach to life. They try to enjoy life as it comes and are not afraid on anything immortal as death. The Chimney Sweeper by William Blake are two poems that describe the life of two boys as chimney sweepers. They were both young orphans sold into the life of chimney sweeping. They describe their lives in first person and describe the horrors of chimney sweeping. The children were exploited for their size as well.
Blake tries to show sympathy for the boys in the poems using both symbolism and irony in both.
In the first poem, a young boy loses both his parents and becomes a chimney sweeper for money. The poem starts out depressing but goes into a sense of hope for the boy as you go into the poem. Blake throws in a lot of religious and biblical imagery throughout the poem. As he goes into the poem, the boy desbribes how he sleeps in soot and says that even though their job is bad now, they will be rewarded when they go to heaven. And in the end, "That thousands of sweepers,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an Angel who had a bright
In the second poem, another boy who also is an orphan describes his life as a chimney sweeper. In this poem however, there is nothing optomistic about it.
The child seems angry with his life and everything around it. He describes himself putting on a false act of happiness while he's