In this particular poem the speaker is "a little black thing among the snow". One reason this poem is not an "all may read" poem is because if the reader is not familiar with Blake's work he or she may not understand why this boy is being called "a little black thing"; this is not to construe the thought of a racial slur or anything of the nature. The little boy is black because he is covered in soot from the chimney, but how are we to know unless we are familiar with "Innocence". ... Which brings us to the setting Blake has described in this poem. ... The only characterization is tha...

• Word Count: 2002
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

In William Blake's Songs of Innocence, the poems written consist of joyful and sweet song-like lyrics creating images of childhood in a natural and happy setting. ... In The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence), the persona, a young boy chimney sweeper, expresses how and when he became a chimney sweeper. ... Tom's initially frightening dream, "That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all locked up in coffins of black... The boy accepts what the angel says. ... "A little black thing among the snow-(1), the young chimney sweeper, wonders where his parents are. " They are both...

• Word Count: 1280
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

In the Songs of Experience version, the narrator introduces the boy chimney sweep as no more than a 'little black thing'. ... In first two verses of both the Innocence and the experience Chimney Sweeper poems, Blake employs basic colour imagery to contrast the 'little black thing' with the white of the snow, which represents the purity of the childhood that the sweep has had taken away from him. The sweep's clothes are 'clothes of death' not just because the soot has turned them black, the colour of mourning, but also because the soot will soon kill the chil...

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