Blake

In the third stanza, Blake describes that the people involved in religious institutions participate in the oppression because they not only allow child labor but encourage it. In addition, Blake states that the "Palace" (12), symbolizing man's government, also oppresses society because soldiers are forced to sacrifice their lives and that these tired victims can only sigh by not speaking up to their oppression.
             By the end of the poem, man's repression has clearly caused the death of.
             everything. Hence the husband who visits the prostitute will bring home "Harlot's curse"(14) symbolizing sexually transmitted diseases which will infect the infant and the curse of a forever ruined marriage. Thus, Blake communicates that people are ignoring the infant's tear, which is a form of protest, and as a consequence, their oppression is a continuous cycle.
             Blake expresses in "The Chimney Sweeper" that humankind is not part of the solution but part of the problem. The image of a "black" child suggests that it is covered in filth and soot because he is forced by society to do his or her duty as a chimneysweeper. Blake suggests that society is cruel and unforgiving to the life of misery that they themselves once lived. Humans allow their own innocent children to bear the suffering of centuries on their back. The second stanza expresses the child's anger and bitterness against humankind who has put him in a life of misery indicating that humans are blind to the oppression that they are causing. Blake believes that humans distant themselves from happiness and love when he states "because I was happy upon the heath and smiled among the winter's snow"(5-6), which suggests that he was then put into a woeful life for a child's happiness is not allowed. The images of "clothes of death"(7) and "notes of woe" suggest that it is humans who direct the children into a life of oppression. Finally, Blake criticizes what the people in religious institutions have not done for children, and he opposes against the distressed life these institutions allow them to endure.