William Blke Songs of Innocence

William Blake: Printer, Poet, and Political Commentator? Carl Hiaasen, a satire-loving journalist, believes strongly in that genre of literature saying, “Good satire comes from anger. It comes from a sense of injustice, that there are wrongs in the world that need to be fixed. And what better place to get that well of venom and outrage boiling than a newsroom, because you’re on the front lines.” These veiled criticisms have the power to bring to light, for all to see, inequality that exists in the world and begin a conversation of change. William Blake had the idea to leverage his printing business (instead of a newsroom) and experience as a poet to begin that conversation with his collection of poems entitled Songs of Innocence. Focusing on “The Little Black Boy,” “Holy Thursday,” and “The Chimney Sweeper” satire is his weapon against the vastly unequal social scene in England around the turn of the 18th century. In “The Little Black Boy,” Blake attacks two main social injustices he believes to be a problem, racial discrimination and religion used as a tool to control and cope with circumstance. Right away, in the first stanza, the reader is introduced to this contrasting imagery, “White as an angel is the English child, / But I am black as if bereav’d of light,” (The Little Black Boy, 3-4) hinting that innately the black man is evil and therefore is lesser than the white man. He is going to have to work harder in order to feel God’s love as “these black bodies and this sun-burnt face / Is but a cloud.” (TLBB, 15-16) Using the disparity between dark and light is a common theme in this poem in which the boy’s mother is attempting to teach him the way to “bear the beams of [God’s] love” (TLBB, 14) so that he is able to rid himself of his dark cloud and be accepted into God’s kingdom. However, it is a long journey being able to finally learn to bear God’s heat and some people are able to do it faster than others, so the little black boy is willing to shade its oppressor, the white English boy, “till he can bear / To lean In joy upon our Father’s knee.” (TLBB, 25-26) Blake is showing how morally wrong it is to be taught that someone who is the cause of an oppressed person’s pain must be loved in order for the oppressed to reach eternal life with God. He sarcastically states at the end that the boy will then stand with God and “stroke his silver hair / And be like him, and he will then love me,” (TLBB, 27-28) as if that is the only situation in which God will love him and it is necessary for him to rid himself of his blackness. What Blake really wants is for there to be social equality in England, but sadly he was about 45 years ahead of the majority of the country. “Holy Thursday” is a negative commentary against the entire entity of the Church, more specifically, how they take awful care of the orphan children under their supervision. These “thousands of little boys and girls” (Holy Thursday, 9) are paraded through the streets of England on Holy Thursday with their “innocent faces clean” (HT, 1) and dressed in new clothing, however, what goes unsaid is that this is one of the few times they are going to be bathed properly and are given very cheap clothing. Blake is breaching the topic of how the Church uses this day as a way to show how noble they are taking such good care of these ever so innocent children, even though this is not the case. Once they reach St. Paul’s Cathedral, the children actively participate in the service while “Beneath them sit the aged men,” (HT, 11) but Blake slips the alleged caretakers a quick jab when he jokingly calls them “wise guardians of the poor.” (HT, 11) Finally, he ends the poem with the disguised line, “Then cherish pity, lest you drive and angel from your door.” (HT, 12) This is how the reader knows he was not being serious in this poem. Why would any one want to cherish pity? Pity is something that people always react negatively to, therefore, linking pity to an angel is a way for him to tell the reader that these children need more than pity, they need to be taken care of in a civil way. Yes, pity may bring in some charitable donations, however that is not enough for them. Children need more than just sustenance, they need to be loved, taught, coddled, and protected from the innocence-stealing world. Blake is astounded that these children face such harsh conditions and would want that to change as soon as possible. Blake’s mission in “The Chimney Sweeper” is to bring to light the abhorrent reality of children working as chimney sweepers while also attacking the way religion is used for them to cope with the harsh reality. The young boy was sold out to the trade before he was even old enough to properly pronounce the word ‘sweep’ and wanders the city yelling “’weep! ‘weep! “weep! ‘weep!” (The Chimney Sweeper, 3) in attempts of getting business. Blake is commenting that children so young, to the point where they have yet to develop proper speech, are being exploited in a business that is often fatal and has many long-term health issues due to inhaling soot. The little boy is then faced with comforting Tom Dacre who just had his head shaved and says to him “never mind it, for when your head’s bare, / You know that the sit cannot spoil your white hair.” (TCS, 7-8) Clearly the young boy is just regurgitating what his boss told him, meaning God will still be able to love him in this line of work. Later that night when Tom finally sleeps, he has a dream where “thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, / Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black.” (TCS, 11-12) This powerful setting is meant to show how many boys have died in this profession and how dark and sinister the future of a chimney sweeper is. But an angel descends from heaven and frees all of them from their coffins and brings them into God’s kingdom where they “wash in a river and shine in the Sun.” (TCS, 16) Then the angel turns to Tom and says “if he’d be a good boy, / He’d have God for his father & never want joy.” (TCS, 19-20) He continues with this sense of obligation in the last stanza where Tom wakes up back in the darkness of his life, but today, “Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm; / So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.” (TCS, 23-24) Blake is criticizing how the elders in this business wrongfully uses religion to tell these young boys that they are all going to be fine as long as they do their duty because they will reach God’s kingdom in the afterlife. To Blake, it is heartbreaking to see the how willing society is to continue to allow children to work in dangerous environments. Having written this appeal to the industry, it shows how dejected Blake was about the abuse of children. William Blake was an innovative thinker near the end of the 18th century in England. He wanted to rid the country of slavery and racial discrimination, he wanted to orphans to have better quality of lives in the orphanages, he wanted children to stop dying and being taken advantage of for monetary gain and he wanted religion to stop being spread to cope with oppressive situations. Sadly, he was in the minority at that point and England was not ready to immediately do what was morally obligated of them. Although the public did not respond to the Songs of Innocence in the way he had hoped, Blake was an important part of starting the conversation on social evolution. Lord Byron said, “Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.” England was the fool in a social sense, and Blake was utilizing satire as his weapon in these poems to better the country.