The Chimney Sweeper

4 Pages 1086 Words

William Blake’s, The Chimney Sweeper, focuses on the thoughts and feelings of a young orphan having to deal with the pressures of losing their parents and being forced to take part in child labor in order to live. The poet uses images and metaphors in order to show the child’s views on how and why his life has changed. Different structures and meanings are the result of these images and metaphors. The poet stresses on how young the child is, through the structure of the poem in order to suggest how wrong the pressures of child labor are.
The structure of this poem helps the reader understand where the poem is coming from, the eye’s of a child. This structure is shown through the way in which the poem is written. The poem is written in very simple wordings and as well in simple stanzas. This structure helps the reader see that the poem is about a young child who speaks in a very simple language. The simple words and terms used through out the poem stress the child’s intellectual capability, which focuses our attention on the fact that this is just a child having to deal with so much pressure and pain.
The poem is written using two rhyming couplets in the first stanza and then in the remaining stanzas there are alternating rhyming lines. As well this poem is written in iambic pentameter, except in the second line when it says “Crying “’weep, ’weep.”…” (2). The words ’weep, ’weep are to be stressed because these two words are a very strong point within this poem. The words not only represent the weeps that this young child cries from the pain and hurt that is being caused to him, but the words as well can represent the demands that are put upon him. Before the word weep there is a single quotation in front of each W, which could represent the letter S. This would then turn the word weep into sweep and since the word is repeated it could represent the demands and pressures that are put upon this you...