A Critical Analysis of The Chimney Sweeper

The next instance of the speaker using the color black in the Songs of Innocence is in line twelve “That thousands of sweepers, Dick Joe, Ned and Jack,/ Were all of them locked up in

In the Songs of Innocence poem the narrator has hope for the future of the chimney sweeper by using the image of a pure white baby. This is demonstrated in lines eighteen and nineteen, “Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,/ They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind:” In using the words naked and white, the image of an infant is shown. Infants are born into the world innocent and pure with hope for their life. By using this image the reader is shown the hopefulness of the speaker as they expect to be taken from the world they are living in to heaven, where they can live in innocence.

This analysis leads to the conclusion that William Blake saw the chimney sweepers as innocent children, by his use of describing them with words associated with purity. However, in the society they live in, innocent children were suffering because of the job that they are performing. This is shown through Blake’s use of the word black, dealing with darkness

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