In his poems Blake uses imagery and diction to contrast how children meet adversity with naive hope while adults meet adversity with delusion and denial. In the 1789 version of “Chimney Sweeper,” Blake describes the situation through the eyes of a child. He invokes sympathy from the reader by creating images of a poor young boy slaving away and sleeping in “soot” (Blake 4). To show how the boys are mistreated, Blake dehumanizes one boy by comparing him to an animal. The comparison of the boy to a “lamb” being shaved also indicates that the boy’s innocence has been violated because of the inhumanity he endures (Blake 6). However, in the 1794 poem, the laboring boy is described as a “thing” (Blake 1) rather than a “lamb,” further dehumanizing the boy (Blake 6). …show more content…
Instead of using pathos to create sympathy for the children, Blake’s style becomes more distant and cold towards the young, suffering boys. The adults are in denial of the boys’ suffering because they see the abuse of child labor and are unable to justify it. Instead of recognizing the injustice of child labor, they see the boys “danc[ing] and sing[ing]” (Blake 9) and automatically believe that they are content, clinging to the belief that they have caused the boys “no injury” (Blake 10). However, the boys are not as joyful as they appear on a surface level. Instead, they are in “misery” (Blake 12). The adults turn a blind eye to the suffering that is plain before them to maintain a facade of virtue. They know that if they acknowledged the injustice, then they would have to also recognize that they too had sinned by allowing the labor to take
The subject of the speech were the factories hiring children to work in their warehouses. The tone of the speech is very sad and down putting since she discusses the places that used to allow child labor such as Alabama. To get across her point, however, she uses the rhetorical strategies of immense pathos and repetition. The author uses heavy amounts of pathos to get her message across to her audience.
Kelley informs her audience that while they are all sleeping, little girls are working and listening to the “deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning and weaving” (20-21). This gives her audience a picture of what is happening in the factories that these girls are working in, and the description of the noise within the factories--imagery--leaves the audience with an idea of the poor working conditions of the young girls. This paragraph also utilizes a tie to emotional appeals, otherwise known as pathos, as it invokes sympathy in the audience due to the fact that they will be resting at home while all of these young girls suffer through long, night-shift hours. This use of emotional appeals invokes Kelley’s audience want to take action to stop the unfair suffering of these
With the use of rhetorical appeals like logos and pathos, Kelley causes the audience to feel guilty about these miserable working conditions. After explaining that “…while we sleep, several thousand little girls will be working in textile mills…” the audience sympathizes with the children. Because they are young, children are seen to be innocent and naïve. Deep into the night, little girls and boys work away to “make our shoes… knit our stockings… spin and weave our cotton underwear…” and adults do nothing but sleep. Kelley places responsibility on the audience, implying that while they
The narrator struggles with the guilt that he has within himself of how he treats his brother Doodle and claims that inside him there is a “knot of cruelty” born from love. (Hurst, 604) The narrator is ashamed about his brother’s disability but he doesn’t
In her speech, written to persuade her audience to help put an end to child labor, Florence Kelley employs many rhetorical devices. America in 1905, we learned, was riddled with inadequate labor laws, as well as working conditions. In order to convey her message, that these unethical statues need to be amended, Kelley uses rhetorical strategies such as pathos, parallelism, and illustration. Pathos is found throughout the entire speech, particularly emphasizing the horrific jobs the children were performing under terrible conditions and for countless hours. The descriptions of these appeal to the readers emotions, as the facts that she shares depict scenes we consider unusual even for adults.
The thematic dichotomy of power and powerlessness take many forms across a range of different poems that draw upon universal experiences as seen by the characters in “A Mother in a Refugee Camp” and “Follower”. They both emit the universal feeling of …; however, whilst one presents it as an empowering emotion, the mothers’ love can be considered as a cause of grief an suffering. By contrast, ”Ozymandias” explores a completely different form of power, that of excessive pride and vanity Seamus Heaney’s “Follower” explores a power dynamic between different generations in a family, and different types of occupation, in its focus on the poet’s feelings towards his father as both a child and an adult. As a child, the poet is presented as being in awe of his father’s power and expertise, and a wanting to follow in his footsteps. However, as an adult, the pet has chosen to work in the field of poetry, not agriculture, thus rejecting his father’s influence.
The formulistic construction and simplistic language echo a child’s understanding of the world, enhanced by the synecdoche “beak and claw”. Harwood’s repeated references to literal and figurative blindness through “daylight riddled eyes”, are metaphoric of the child’s ignorance. The child belief of “death clean and final not this obscene” is left reeling, highlighted through alliteration and grotesque imagery “stuff that dropped and dribbled through loose straw tangling in bowels”.
In his poem “Behind Grandma’s House,” Gary Soto details the life and daily routine of a somewhat masochistic ten year old boy as he kicks over trash cans, terrorizes cats, and drowns ant colonies with his own urine. In many ways the boy acts as any other boy his age would be expected to, but he tends to go further than most young boys with his actions and descriptions of how he feels. This extra violence and destructive tendency the narrator exhibits can lead the reader to believe that, rather than being a typical child, he strongly craves attention due to his circumstances, and he is willing to act out and act obscenely in order to receive that attention. Throughout the poem the narrator details all the things he does to prove how tough he is, many
To Suffer or Not to Suffer As human beings, we try to eschew from the suffering and adversities that plague human morality. Nonetheless, society remains drawn to the surplus of tragedies in plays, movies, and literary works. Not only do these works provide an escape from our own hardships, but suffering and tragedy is a significant aspect to the development of human society. Personally, I have experienced my own share of sorrow, trauma, and difficulties in life. While they may not be as severe as those faced by the characters in A Doll’s House and Never Let Me Go, a pervasive theme still manifests in the presence of suffering.
In some works of literature, childhood and adolescence are portrayed as times graced by innocence and a sense of wonder; in other works, they are depicted as times of tribulation and terror. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding the author portrays that children are not completely innocent. Golding’s representation of childhood and adolescence also shows us the attitudes children have towards participating in work. In Lord of the Flies Golding portrays that children are not completely innocent.
This line is deviated the most in the poem and if one should look at this poem as looking at a painting; this is recognized as the foregrounding. ( Norton Anthology, p. 1345) 4. Blake suddenly writes “So your chimneys I sweep” in order to make the reader feel responsible for the young chimney sweeper’s unhappiness. (Paul Simpson) 5.
In his poem, “Chimney Sweeper” (from the Songs of Innocence), William Blake portrays 18th century England as a place of injustice and brutality through the eyes of an innocent chimney sweep. While the pure boy who narrates the poem does not realize the harsh realities of his life, Blake nonetheless manages to convey the desolate landscape which he was raised in with clarity. Through his use of a first person perspective, the metaphor of innocence and corruption, and an unreliable narrator, Blake establishes a stark contrast between the child’s innocent perspective and the iniquitous world which surrounds him in order to expose the immorality of child exploitation and labor. In order to fully understand “Chimney Sweeper,” one must first establish the historical framework of life in 18th century England as it would have been experienced by a chimney sweep.
In his Songs of Innocence, Blake uses the Romantic gothic concept to compare supernatural themes with the 18th century society. He uses this concept in both “The Chimney Sweeper” and “Little Black Boy” to present the harsh environment
For example, the same format is used in ‘Song’ when the narrator asks “Child, is thy father dead?” and the child responds with “Father is gone!”. Here, Blake leaves room for interpretation by using the constant questioning. To poets in the Romantic period, childhood daydreams and visions were the true source of adult creativity, while others believed them to be delusions. While these instances are very compelling, one of the best examples of childhood innocence occurs in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’, where the narrator says, “Because I am happy and dance and sing, they think they have done me no injury”, a perfect example of childhood innocence transitioning to experience which leaves we as
Danielle Rose English 192 Prof. J Perl William Blake Like so many before and after him, Blake falls into the category of artists whose creative genius went unaddressed in their own lifetime. It was only after his death that the broad scope of his literary and artistic aptitude was acknowledged. But his scathing social critiques and insights into the nature of the human psyche are made no less relevant by their time spent in obscurity. Chronological analysis of a set of Blake poems, “The Lamb”, “The Tyger” and “Jerusalem” reveal the deeply relevant insights that Blake failed to impress upon the people of his own time.