Chimney Sweeper

Exploitation in “The Chimney Sweeper”

When looking at “The Chimney Sweeper” in Songs of Innocence, William Blake writes about a young boy who was sold into the life of a chimney sweeper. He discusses the dismal conditions the boy must live in along with other orphaned workers. He goes into detail, telling the account of Tom Dacre, who cried when they shaved his head. The narrator continues, telling little Tom that the soot will no longer spoil his white hair. Tom then has a dream that he and thousands of other sweepers are locked up in coffins until an angel comes to release them. He describes a heaven-like scene, where they are surrounded by plains, running free, washing in a river with the sun shining overhead. He goes into greater detail saying they rose into the clouds, naked and white. Blake then writes, “And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father & never want joy” (19-20). Tom then awakes and goes to work, and “though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm”. He now believed he had nothing to fear, with the hope of going to heaven in the future (23).

Through this poem, Blake addresses the social issue of child labor in the eighteenth century. In using the word “thousands” in line 11, when writing of Tom’s dream of all of the coffins, Blake is able to convey just how many children are exploited and forced into child labor. In the conclusion of the poem, readers are left with the impression that the children can only escape the labor and unjust conditions through their death. Blake does not give the narrator a name, signifying how in society, he is forgotten. Because of the conditions he was born into, he has to endure hard work and be exploited as a child labor worker. In line 3, we are shown that the boy is sold at such a young age, he could “scarcely cry ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”. This anaphora suggests that he was so young, he was unable to pronounce the word sweep.

Blake uses symbolism throughout the poem to show the...