In a well-written essay, analyze how Blake used figurative
language to convey a major theme of the poem.
A major theme in "The Chimney Sweeper" by William
Blake is the loss of innocence. Through the employment of multiple contrasting
elements, metaphors, imagery, and symbolism, Blake creates a world full of
doom, despair, disease, and eventually death.
The speaker of the poem is a fellow chimney sweeper,
presumably a child as well. Making him a peer of little Tom's makes the speaker
a more reliable and trusting source. We assume that he knows the pain and
suffering that Tom is experiencing. However, because he beings with a short
summary of how he himself became a chimney sweeper, and that he calls Tom
"little Tom" leads us to believe that he is somewhat older than Tom.
The gloomy, sad tone is established by Blake in the very first stanza. To
further enforce this tone of the poem, he uses personification. While telling
his sorrow tale of how he himself began chimney sweeping, he says that his
tongue "could scarcely cry 'weep! weep! weep!'" Ending the first
stanza with the use of anastrophe further emphasized the speaker’s role as
Tom’s peer and our lesser. “So your chimneys I sweep,” says the speaker,
assigning the reader the role of superior. This gives Little Tom’s story a
sense of urgency.
It is in lines 5-8 that we are introduced to “little Tom
Dacre,” a small boy who has white hair that is curly like the hair on “a lamb’s back.” Using
the color white instead of saying blonde and describing him as a lamb symbolizes
Tom’s innocence as a sacrificial character. Tom is crying about
being forced into sacrificing his hair and essentially his childhood and
innocence in order to sweep chimneys. Having the white hair on the innocent
young boy in such a dirty, gloomy setting provides a contrast that evokes an
unsettling feeling. This is to emphasize the immorality of the situation
presented in the poem; intended to make the reader sympathize with Tom.
In the dream described in the poem, Tom sees some of his
fellow sweepers in black coffins. They are then set free by an angel with a key. The coffins of black obviously represent death, a very possible
outcome for Tom. Because these dead sweepers were also presumably children, the
fact that when they are let out they partake in such child-like activities—leaping,
laughing, and running in green plains—reinforces their return to innocence,
something they had to sacrifice. They “wash in a river” to cleanse the dirt
from the chimneys and metaphorically cleanse their souls from the despair they
went through. When they finish cleansing, they are naked and white:
childlike and innocent once more.
The world in the dream is painted as such a contrast to the
world that Tom lives in that it is understandable that the dream convinces him
to long for and look forward to death. The
unsettling thought of a child wishing for nothing but death, someone who is so
young, who lives his every day wanting to die, ends the poem. He can no longer
return to his child life. He has been exposed to a new world and now he wants
nothing more than death. Tom has lost all of his innocence.
