Monthly Archives: March 2021
Assignment #6
A poem by William Blake that I chose was called, “The Lamb”. This is because I got the impression that the purpose of this poem was to question the existence of the lamb and how it came to be on earth. A line that stuck with me in the poem was in the second stanza when Blake says, “He is called by thy name, for He calls himself a lamb.” In this line, I learned that this poem can be considered a dedication to Jesus and the sacrifices that he has made to die for his sins. Not only in Christianity, this also reminded me of other religions where a lamb is a sacred animal that’s used for religious purposes and sacrifices as a way of offering something to God. I think this poem also represents the innocence that particularly stems from children, which is why Blake considers a child and a lamb to be similar. I agree with this because a lamb is also considered a baby goat, meaning that they are just born and innocent. I also think that a lamb was chosen because they are white which is a color that represents innocence and purity.
Assignment #6
I choose the poem “London” by William Blake. The title of the poem drew me to select the poem “London”. A pair of lines that seems meaningful to me is In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear. These pair of lines mean that he sees pain in people’s eyes and the fears and tears in newborn babies. Everyone in the city of London is placed on restriction by law based on the population. William Blake can understand the feelings of people of being abused in the city life. The theme of the poem “London” is the city London is a dark and miserable place.
“London” William Blake
The image and the poem work together by it is describing the city of London which is very depressing and miserable. The city London is a dark place and the people are being abused in the city. I see in the image that I have selected that helps me understand the poem fully is the young child helping the old men and guiding him to a place. In the poem it talks about is the first stanzas it talks about I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet. The speaker is talking about meeting and seeing someone in the city of London.
Assignment #6
I have selected the poem “The Chimney Sweeper” on page 337. As soon as the poem begins, there is a story behind it with having lost a parent and having to work at such a young age, which is what drew me most into the poem because it had an interesting plotline. From lines 10-14 of this poem, it says how little Tom had a dream in which many of the sweepers were locked up in black coffins as an angel arrived with a special key that opened this coffin and the children were set free. These specific lines had a meaningful meaning to me since it is a dream which can be represented as a deep feeling little Tom was feeling of wanting to be set free alongside those children. “So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm” is the very last line of this poem in which I interpret as a set of mind being taught in which they will be maintained safe as long as they do what they are supposed to. Therefore, it can be argued that a very important theme of this poem is the desire for freedom from these children since they are put to work at such a young age when they should be enjoying their childhood instead of being Chimney Sweeps.
Assignment #6
The poem I have chosen is the first “The Chimney Sweeper”. It stood out to me the most because out of all the poem, the imagery really stuck with me. It was both depressive yet reassuring. It is definitely sad because the situations these little kids have to go through, cleaning chimneys, sleeping with ashes and worst of all being naked. The way Blake described the kids really sends chills down my spine. However at the same time, because of the dream that Tom had, it lightens up the mood and portrays hope. I liked the way Blake uses an angel who resembles purity and everything good to come and rescues these kids from the entrapment they have been born into. That is why my favorite stanza has to be the last one, where Tom wakes up but instead of crying due to his unfortunate circumstances, he wakes up being “happy and warm”. Although I do not necessarily see the deeper meaning or if this poem was a metaphor for something, I do believe that Blake did a great job bringing out the emotion out of the reader.
Assignment 6
“The Lamb” by William Blake took my attention when I first read through it, the poem was written in such a way that the questions are being asked and the answers are being given, I found it really interesting because the poet honors Lord Christ who was blameless and unadulterated like a kid and tame and gentle like a sheep. Its first stanza is enlightening and country, the second focuses on dynamic profound matters and comprises of similarity and clarification. By offering responses to his own inquiry, the child prevails with regards to changing over it into an expository one, therefore countering the underlying unconstrained feeling of the poem. In the first stanza readers are furnished with a genuine representation of a sheep. In the poem, the offspring of blamelessness more than once asks the sheep concerning who made him. The child delivers Little Lamb to ask him who made him and needs to discover whether he realizes who made him. The youngster needs to realize who gave the Lamb his life, who took care of him while living along the stream on the other said of the knoll , leading back to the nature of God’s creation.
Assignment #6
This was the first poem I started reading and the fact that they were talking about a lamb in the poem felt really weird to me. I did a little bit of research and found out the lamb is associated with Jesus. I already have some knowledge about how other religions have something to do with lambs or other animals in general, so it made me want to read this poem more. The second stanza seems more meaningful to me. In the second stanza of the poem, there is an identification of the lamb, Christ, and the child. Christ has another name, that is, Lamb, because Christ is meek and mild like lamb as identified in the poem. Christ was also a child when he first appeared on this earth as the Son of God. The poem conveys the spirit of childhood – the purity, the innocence, and the tenderness of childhood. A religious note is introduced in the poem because of the image of Christ as a child. The Lamb is a pastoral poem. The child says that the person, who has created the Lamb and has given many gifts described in the first stanza, is himself by the name of the Lamb. It is Jesus Christ who calls himself a Lamb.
Assignment #6
The poem I chose was “London” by William Blake, the reason I selected this poem was because it questions humanity and the negative aspects of the industrial revolution which has caused hopelessness. A pair of lines that seems particularly meaningful was, “How the chimney-sweeper’s cry Every blackening Church appalls..” William was referring to the horrors of child labor and exploitation during the industrial revolution, innocent children who were supposed to be free were instead crying because they had been exploited for labor. This line conveyed the message of losing faith in humanity by referring to the smoke of chimney which was blackening the Church. It connects to the overall theme of the poem by showing sadness and pain in one of the most industrialized cities which was oppressing its own people.
Group Project Assignments
Below please find your group assignments, at long last! (Blame your peers for the delay – not me!) Just to reiterate, your group is responsible for creating some kind of creative supplement to our reading and class discussion. It should be something that can exist electronically, either through direct posting or a link on our blog. It should NOT be a powerpoint about the author’s biography or an analysis of a particular work. Instead, think in terms of amplifying our discussion by exploring some aspect of the context or subject matter explored in your text. Don’t be afraid to be creative in your thinking! This shouldn’t be a stressful assignment; nor does it need to be very ambitious. (For example, if I were in a group that was presenting this week about William Blake, I might collect some examples of how Blake’s poetry has been set to music and share them with some commentary on the blog. If I had done my presentation last week, perhaps I would have prepared a timeline about women’s suffrage to chart when women won the right to vote in various parts of the world. Or perhaps I might have explored something related to contemporary feminism. What are the most pressing issues that political feminists are concerned with today? These are just ideas….)
Start the process off by connecting with your partners and figuring out how and when to communicate with one another and to meet virtually. You will need to familiarize yourself with your assigned text and author before you can brainstorm about your project. Each group must schedule a meeting with me a minimum of one week ahead of the presentation. I am happy to use my zoom account to set up zoom meetings for your group and to act as a resource if your get stuck. (If you are in the Frederick Douglass group, don’t worry. You are working within a tight timeline, but you will do a great job! You should be meeting with me ASAP!)
Frederick Douglass – March 22nd: Zijie Lu, Yessenia Guerra, Sadia Laskar
Leo Tolstoy – April 12th: Jean Joseph, Kaicy Gaynor, Zain Rehman
Rabindranath Tagore – April 19th: Md Asif, Minahil Imtiaz, Simran Sharif
Franz Kafka – April 26th: Quinton Lee, Sangey Lama, Fiona Persaud
Tadeusz Borowski – May 3rd: Matthew Critelli, Tianhui Lei, Jiayang Li
Assignment #6
The poem that I picked is the ” The lamb ” by William Blake, because after I compare with these two poem, I think I have better understanding with this poem, that is why I picked this poem. The lines that really meaningful for me is in the first stanza line three it said ” Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o’er the mead; Gave thee colthing of delight.” when i first reading this poem, I think about my mom, she gave me the life and give me everything that she had, feed me when I was a child, I think this poem was really meaningful for me. This poem using lamb to describe the jesus, because in the poem it said ” He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a lamb.” this poem meaning the jesus just like lamb, when jesus in the cross, lamb got killed, that is why they called jesus like lamb. This poem really make me thing a lot.
