ipl-logo

Analysis Of William Blake's The Chimney Traver

751 Words4 Pages

Most people know of the happy, soot covered, singing and dancing chimney sweeper known as Dick Van Dyke from the beloved story of Mary Poppins, but the chimney sweeper for today’s topic isn’t written by P. L. Travers. William Blake is an author best known for the ballads he had composed in his two of his books The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Innocence and Experience, including “The Chimney Sweeper.” During the Fifteenth Century, People built fires daily in order to cook food and keep warm, and this caused a build of soot and ash within chimneys. These chimneys were often cleaned by children small enough to fit down inside the narrow brick structures. The problems that arose from kids doing this had a wide range of undesirable effects that could lead to an early death. Thankfully, though, these children had the comfort of religion when confronted with the possibility of death. William Blake, seeing the problem with this, uses his skills with words to show the injustice and inequality of child labor in his time through the use of his satirical ballad “The Chimney Sweeper.” The possibility of an early death was a threat at all times to the “diligent little workers,” and it would not be too far of a stretch to say that this thought haunted their naive minds. “As Time was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black.” (Blake 10-12) One of the little boys had a nightmare one night

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Pitty Sing By Edgar Allan Poe

    231 Words  | 1 Pages

    Each cat’s relevance to the story are different but the result of the story is similar. Pitty Sing was mentioned only in the beginning and near the end of the story. Pluto played a huge role through half of the story before his owner killed him. Pitty Sing was talked about why he was going on the trip, in the beginning, because he was important to the grandmother. The next and last time Pitty Sing was relevant to the story was a key part, near the end, when he caused the car to flip over.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Florence Kelley Ap Language

    818 Words  | 4 Pages

    She begins by stating that there are children in this nation who are merely “earning their bread”. From this, the audience deducts that his speech will not only be serious, but it will be a call to action. In the same paragraph, Kelley states the several professions children can be found in, such as “the coal-breakers of Pennsylvania”. By doing so, the writer evokes a sense of sympathy towards the children as they are shown to be working in conditions that are not only rigorous, but unsafe. Kelly attempts to reach the audience’s emotions once again when she later states, “while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night through.”

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By Florence Kelley

    704 Words  | 3 Pages

    Through this rhetorical strategy Kelley is trying to encourage readers and her audience to support regulations for child labor. If they fight together then more regulations will be enforced, eventually ending child labor. The effect of this strategy was placing the idea that many children would be working just to survive while these people are sleeping carefree. To achieve their survival they had to work late, riks their lives daily, and work in perilous

    Read More

  • Examples Of Inhumanity In Night

    422 Words  | 2 Pages

    Chimney over there?... Do you see those flames? ... That’s your grave. ”(40).

    Read More

  • Florence Kelley Ap Language Essay

    428 Words  | 2 Pages

    Florence Kelley was a women’s rights activist who gave a speech before the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the summer of 1905 on the topic of child labor. This speech on child labor offers insight to the harsher lives that some children have to carry in comparison to some adults due to no child labor laws. Kelley’s writing was meant to persuade the audience to improve child labor laws and safety by appealing to pathos. Throughout the beginning of the essay, there’s repetition of the phrase: “[W]hile we sleep.”

    Read More

  • Florence Kelley Ap Language

    236 Words  | 1 Pages

    Children are having their childhoods took away from them everyday due to many reasons, but a major reason is child laboring. Florence Kelley, United States social worker discusses the negative effects of child laboring using rhetorical devices such as imagery, credibility, and emotions to explain to the National American Suffrage Association the affects that child laboring has on a child’s childhood. In this speech Florence Kelley displays many different emotions such as guilt, anger, pity and sadness. “Tonight while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills, all the night though, in the deafening noise……” Kelley reveals an emotion of sadness.

    Read More

  • Florence Kelley Ap Language

    842 Words  | 4 Pages

    At the beginning of the speech, Kelley explains that “two million children under the age of sixteen are earning their [family’s] bread” and serve as a source of income to support households (1-3). Kelley then goes on to disclose that many states have no minimum age requirements for workers which can cause elementary-age children to work in factories and mills at night. Kelley uses the metonymy of bread to refer to money and explains how the child is an important source of income for many families. By elaborating on the ages at which children work, Kelley demonstrates to the audience that anyone can be a victim of the horrors of child labor and attempts to cause the audience to feel empathy toward the children in their situation. Similarly, Kelley employs the oxymoron of “deafening noise” to refer to the poor conditions that children face throughout the night.

    Read More

  • The Credibility Of White People In Kindred By Octavia Butler

    1817 Words  | 8 Pages

    White people, be it men or women, constantly exert their power over black people, taking their humanity piece by piece. During the 19th century, it was often found that black people did not have any rights; little, if any, were truly free. Those that were not free were forced to slave away at some plantation, owned by a white man that had complete power over them. Black people were forced to care for the children of the whites, they had to do strenuous field work, cook, clean, etc. Although white people seem to have a great deal of power during the 19th century, Octavia Butler's novel Kindred demonstrates that they depend utterly on the labor and bodies of black people because that is how they implement their power and superiority over them.

    Read More

  • My Father's Lunch Poem

    813 Words  | 4 Pages

    For different people, comparable situations do not always reproduce the same end results or leave the same impressions. Rather, the resulting conclusion is often highly variable. As is the case of two labors featured in the poems, My Father’s Lunch” and “The life of a Digger”. While Erica Funkhouser’s speaker, Henry, experiences injustice and lack of reward for his hard labor in “The Life of a Digger,” Margarita Engle’s speaker experiences prosperity and remuneration for their father’s hard work in “My Father’s Lunch.” Each author uses the setting of a laboring man’s lunch break to demonstrate the ramifications of a hard day’s work and the rewards or lack thereof for their efforts.

    Read More

  • Fire Motif In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

    634 Words  | 3 Pages

    One day, Jeannette was playing with fire by lighting toilet paper on fire and flushing it when the fire became too big. A couple of nights later, Jeannette “smelled smoke and then saw flames leaping at the open window… [she] saw one of the curtains, only a few feet from the bed, was ablaze” (33). Jeannette has had past trauma with fire, so she is curious about it. She lights things on fire as a coping method because of what she went through.

    Read More

  • What Is Florence Kelley Rhetorical Speech

    1254 Words  | 6 Pages

    Childhood is an age of bliss where innocence holds oneself tightly. Tragically, American history disagrees. As industrialization started to become one of the biggest leading powers in the American economy and society during the early 20th century, businesses began to hire whomever they could, including children. In July 22, 1905 in Philadelphia, Florence Kelley took an appalled, but determined tone when she spoke out against child labor in an effort to give women voting rights to right this wrong. By using sound rhetorical language, diction, and rhetorical appeals such as pathos and logos, Kelley was able to create a vivid speech that reflects on the inhumane ways child labor inflicts harm on the innocence that describes childhood, as well as convince the audience that women’s suffrage is the solution to this immoral problem.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The Ballad Of Landlord

    937 Words  | 4 Pages

    ‘Ballad of Landlord’ lays an emphasis on the conflict with social injustice between people of different social level. Langston Hughes stresses the idea of unfair advantage given to people of higher ranks in society by subtly raising the idea of racial segregation between the blacks and whites. He develops a unique rhythm to represent the different stances between a Negro tenant and a white landlord through uses of dialogue, rhetorical question, and hyperbole. The poem opens up with a repeated structure in the first two stanzas to show the dependence of a tenant on a landlord.

    Read More

  • John Keats When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

    551 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the beginning, children are taught to fear the concept of death. Most people spend their lives fearing death, but it’s not death that they are afraid of. It is part of nature to die, and our minds know that, what scares most people is the thought of death before they have had time to accomplish what they want in life. In “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be,” John Keats put into words how people feel about dying before they have been successful in whatever mission they have set forth for themselves. His poem touches the reality of people’s feelings though imagery and figurative language.

    Read More

  • The Landlady Foreshadowing Analysis

    419 Words  | 2 Pages

    Key Assignment One: “The Landlady” In “The Landlady,” by Roald Dahl, the author uses foreshadowing to alert the reader of the possible calamity that will befall the main character, Billy Weaver. Immediately, readers are provided with foreshadowing clues to the outcome of the story such as, “But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks” (Page 62). Roald Dahl drops hints ‘deadly cold’ and ‘flat blade of ice’, in the text, to foreshadow Billy's fate. Being that both statements are associated with violence, Billy may be in unavoidable grave danger.

    Read More

  • Role Of Imagination In Romantic Poetry

    1932 Words  | 8 Pages

    In “The Chimney Sweeper”, the little boy imagines: And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he open’d the coffins & set them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun

    Read More

More about Analysis Of William Blake's The Chimney Traver

Open Document