Symbols and Motifs

Symbols

• Coffin represents the lifestyle in which the children are trapped
• Lamb is a symbol of innocence
• Light is a symbol of hope and freedom
• Darkness represents captivity and terror

Motifs

• Light and Dark are reoccuring motifs in the Songs of Innocence
  Examples:
  The "bright key" counters the "coffins of black". The key is bright giving imagery of light, the key also sets the children free. Here light over comes darkness.
  The sweeps work at night in the dark. The dream takes place in the light and sun.
• Black and White are also reocurring motifs in Songs of Innocence
  Example:
  Black soot spoils the white hair. White is a symbol of innocence and youth, showing the soot and the lifestyle robbing the children of their innocence.
  

Summary of Differences between Poems

Differences

Songs of Experience

Songs of Experience – The Chimney Sweeper
This poem is from the point of view of a boy who can see the social injustice. He sees a young boy crying in the snow while his mother and father have gone up to the church to pray. This casts a negative image of the parents that have abandoned him and God for allowing this treatment to happen. Like Songs of Innocence, there are brief images of innocence but they are immediately countered by images of death. This child believes that his sweep life is punishment for having a happy childhood unlike the naive child in Songs of Innocence this child knows this lifestyle will lead him to an early death. The final line of the poem emphasizes a criticism of God by placing heaven and misery together in one line.

Songs of Innocence

Songs of Innocence – The Chimney Sweeper
This poem is from the point of view of a young chimney sweeper who does not see or understand the social injustice. The poem is full of pictures of innocence such as images of a lamb and an angel. In this poem Tom Dacre, has a dream of an angel freeing the weepers from their coffins of black. The coffins represent the sweeps’ terrible lifestyle. God is seen as a saviour and is portrayed in a positive way. This poem includes details of the historical lifestyle of the children. For example: the children were not clothed, they slept on bags of soot and mostly worked at night. The last two stanzas emphasize the child’s misconception that if he does his work no harm will come to him. It also demonstrates the hope the young children have for a better life.

Historical Significance of the Chimney Sweep Poems

The poems “The Chimney Sweeper”, protests the living conditions, working conditions and the overall treatment of young chimney sweeps in the cities of England. In 1788, there was an attempt to pass an act to improve these conditions. This act would have made many people aware of the lives of the chimney sweeps. These conditions are represented Blake’s poem for example: “then naked and white, all their bags left behind”; referring to the bags of soot chimney sweeps slept on. Sweeps were sometimes not given clothes so that their masters would not have to replace them, they were also rare bathed. Sweeps who were not killed by fires usually died from respiratory problems or cancer of the scrotum. Sweeping chimneys often left the children with deformed ankles and spines. Sweeps were seen as subhuman creatures, not part of a human society.

The Author of the Poem

William Blake was born in 1757 and died in 1827. He was an English artist and poet. He wrote Songs of innocence (1789) which is a collection of poems written from a child’s point of view. He then wrote Songs of Experience (1794) which contained poems in response to the ones from Innocence, to represent contrasts between the naive child and the matured child.