In William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper," Blake looks at how a Chimney Sweep can be happy in deplorable conditions. Conversely, William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" looks at how a Chimney Sweep is sad and depressed in his deplorable conditions. These two poems which deal with the same subject matter feature polar opposite tones: one of hope and innocence, the other of bitterness and experience. In William Blake's ""The Chimney Sweeper," Blake takes two contrasting stances on the church from the perspective of the same person.
The 1789 poem deals with dark imagery, but makes such horrible suffering bearable through the promise of a better life. Dacre's dream also begins with thousands of coffins. However, the tone lightens when an Angel comes to free all the sweeps from their suffering. With that knowledge, Dacre gets up and continues happily, safe in the knowledge that one day he will be saved. Here the child has great faith in the established institution of religion, and can bear his suffering with the knowledge that the Powers that Be will one day save him.
The 1794 poem also deals with religion, but is fair less celebratory. The irony here is that the narrator's parents are busy praying, which normally brings a change for the better. But Blake juxtaposes the promise of a better future with no change. The Chimney sweep still suffers despite all his prayers and hopes, and God "make up a heaven of our misery." This time, the narrator is far less faithful, he notes how all his parent's prayers have done nothing to improve his life. He feels "God & his Priest & King" are happy because they can survive on the fruits of his suffering.
The bitter 1794 poem is also far shorter than the 1789, half the length. Most of the bulk was the vision of the Angel and happiness, which is not present in the 1794 poem. This makes the hope for salvation seem extraneous and forced, like it were tacked on to try to justify the bad images in the first three stanzas. In the 1794, it states the hopelessness of the narrators condition quickly and directly, with no long-winded attempts to alleviate the pain. Also, Tom is cheered up by a dream, something that isn't real.
Blake looks at two opposites here, a faith in established institutions to help a person and the disillusionment to the failings of those institutions. A fairly archetypal arc is that from innocence to cynicism to action. The person begins innocent and hopeful, but grows more cynical as they see more suffering. Eventually, they decide to try to change the suffering into something that the hoped for when they were younger. These two poems fit the first two of that arc. If there were a third, it would likely be of someone working personally to save the sweeps.
Reflection
This was our first attempt to write a compare and contrast essay with two works of poetry. I had quite a bit of trouble with this one. I think that this is a four essay; it closely resembles the benchmark essay for four. I had a few interesting ideas but they don't go anywhere and don't have any sort direction. After we read the two, I was a bit thrown on what to do. I think it was because the prompt was quite vague- only compare and contrast, no more instruction? Also, I'm not that familiar with poetic devices. I normally used a list of devices when we did analysis- I never really memorized the devices. I only really noticed the imagery, which was the most superficial part of the poems. I also think that I tried to create a single thesis before I tried to interpret the poems separately to find their individual meanings. I think that I need to study the list of poetic devices and learn to create two separate arguments before trying to synthesis a compare and contrast argument to become better at this type of prompt.
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