In "The Chimney Sweeper" from Songs of Innocence, the narrator, a little boy who is in his innocence and youth, is unaware of how difficult his life is. ... The boy's belief that "if all do their duty, they need not fear harm" (Line 24), even though he has been abandoned by his father and is forced to work in such degrading conditions, reveals his innocence and naivety about the "harm" he is exposed to on a daily basis. ... In the first three lines, the narrator calls what he sees as a "little black thing among the snow" (Line 1) instead of a child...

• Word Count: 1939
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The poem talks about the narrator's life in the house where he and his family lived and kept "pre-war Europe alive" for nineteen years. ... In this poem the narrator speaks about his perspective of his father, and his lack of understanding of him and his polish culture. ... The responder can see there that the father is blind to the boys needs, he can only see that the boy continues to love him and believes that that is all that matters. ... They arrive from America believing that they are a superior race and above all blacks. ... The girls realise that they are going to have to accept th...

• Word Count: 1417
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

A point to make about the apparent simplicity of Blake's poems is that they are deliberate (in an attempt to simplify the moral dilemmas of the time and present them in a form which could be understood). Ironically, the Songs of Experience are somewhat simpler in the way that the speaker of the poem is the voice of experience, warning the innocence about the futility of life. ... In the Songs of Experience version, the narrator introduces the boy chimney sweep as no more than a 'little black thing'. ... The sweep's clothes are 'clothes of death' not just because ...

• Word Count: 1564
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate