THE SONGS OF INNOCENCE: CHIMNEY SWEEPER

The poem The Chimney Sweeper consists of a few young boys who live a challenging life as chimneysweepers, living in an unsanitary environment. The narrator of this poem is a young child speaks of how his father sold him to an employer to work. He names a few of his mates who also share the same catastrophic experience as he does. The names listed are Tom Dacre, Dick, Joe, Ned and Jack. Tom has a dream, which showed the chimneysweepers “locked up in black coffins”. “Black is a mysterious color that is typically associated with the unknown or the negative.”(Bourn)Furthermore, a coffin is a symbol of death. The children may not be locked up in coffins literally, however they are metaphorically, because they are not living their lives free willingly but rather encaged in an environment where they would not want to be. In Tom’s dream an angel comes with a bright key and unlocks the coffin and sets all the chimneysweepers free. I believe free is the keyword here. The angel then tells Tom Dacre if he is a good boy God will love him and he will never want joy. I believe that the dream helped lighten the days of the sweepers listed above, because they believed that they were no longer alone. However the freedom stated is only absolute after their death.

William Blake designed the engraving below to pair with the poem The Chimney Sweeper. The poem gives off a desolate impression, however the image below shows children with their hands in the air, one may consider that as a sign of celebration. Even though the narrator is one of the chimneysweepers most of the poem is abut Tom’s dream. The engraving shows many more children. Furthermore instead of an angel using a bright key to unlock the coffin and let the chimneysweeper go free as stated in the poem, there is a woman lowering a child into the coffin.