Blake: Tone

Thoughts:

1789: The tone is innocent and all the more pitiful because of the child‟s innocence. He does not blame his father or those who force him to work. He sees the bright side of everything, when in fact the dream of the “coffins of black” is a more realistic description of his life.

1794: The tone is quite critical, even condemning, of a social system that allows parents to pray in church while their children are sold into slavery. In the last two lines, it‟s not perfectly clear if the speaker is blaming either “God,” or “his Priest” or the “King” or all of them, but it is clear that someone is responsible for the appalling life the child has to live, and hypocrisy is involved since all these entities should value the lives of innocent children more than the carrying out of religious exercises.


Paragraph Development:

Tone: First Poem

Assertion: The fact that the young speaker is totally unaware of how horrendous his life is creates a tone of naivete and innocence.

Evidence: The young chimney sweeper could not exist in more bitter circumstances. He was sold into the chimney sweep profession by his father and began the arduous work before he could even speak clearly. He sleeps in “soot” and in “cold” harsh weather, utterly uncared for.

Analysis: Even though the young boy is forced to work in degrading conditions and has been abandoned by his father, his belief that “if all do their duty, they need not fear harm” reveals that he is completely naïve about the “harm” he is exposed to every day.


Tone: Second poem

Assertion: The second poem is scathing, critical, and cynical. The speaker clearly perceives the harsh conditions the boy lives in, conditions directly caused by a social system that perpetuates child labor.

Evidence: The speaker sees “a little black thing among the snow” and asks him where his parents are. The child explains that because he was “happy upon the heath/And smil‟d among the winter‟s snow,” his parents clothed him “in the clothes of death,/And taught [him] to sing the notes of woe.”

Analysis: Since the child comprehends that his parents are to blame, in contrast to the first poem in which he does not see the truth, the tone is bitter and critical of the religious and social structure that praises the parents for going to church yet doesn‟t condemn them for abandoning their child.