London - William Blake

Question 1

LONDON - STRUCTURE

Answer 1

• Written in four stanzas with a regular alternate scheme; may reflect the regular walking pace of the narrator as he walks around London.
• The last line in each stanza tends to deliver a powerful statement which sums up the rest of the stanza; stanza 1 focusing on misery, stanza 2 on peoples refusal to stand tall, stanza 3 about the way people are sacrificed for the rich and powerful, stanza 4 about how all this poverty is corrupting everything good about family and life.

Question 2

LONDON - CONTEXT

Answer 2

• The poem is set during a time in England where there was poverty, child labour and a horrific war with France. Women had no rights, death rates from disease and malnutrition were high and the industrial revolution has resulted in many large oppressive factories; Blake’s poems often railed against these and how London, arguably the greatest city in the world at that time, was so dirty and corrupt.
• During this time France had thrown off and executed their king. The People’s revolution was meant to show that all men are equal and have power. In Britain, a country with an old monarchy and aristocracy, this was scary. Blake is perhaps supporting revolution, asking people to throw off the ‘manacles’ of their belief that they should be told what to do.

Question 3

LONDON - AUTHOR

Answer 3

William Blake

Question 4

LONDON - KEY IDEAS

Answer 4

• The poem is an ironic look at misery in the greatest city o in the world.
• Blake’s views are revolutionary for the time, challenging the idea that man is worth more than slavery.
• Blake challenges the establishment in their “palaces” and “churches” which are marked by the blood and blackening of good people; people in power are living on the pain of others.

Question 5

LONDON - KEY QUOTES

Answer 5

“each chartered street / Near where the chartered Thames does flow”
“In every cry of every man, / In every infant’s cry of fear, / In every voice: in every ban”
“mind-forged manacles”
“runs in blood down palace walls”
”plagues the marriage hearse”

Question 6

Analysis - “each chartered street / Near where the chartered Thames does flow”

Answer 6

• Chartered is something which is listed and regulated; streets are clearly controlled but it suggests the Thames, the river likewise is controlled, nature controlled by man.
• Criticises humans’ impact on nature.

Question 7

Analysis - “In every cry of every man, / In every infant’s cry of fear, / In every voice: in every ban”

Answer 7

• Repetition of ‘in every’ used to show the scale of suffering.
• The suffering is not only affecting those who work but innocent children.

Question 8

Analysis - “runs in blood down Palace walls”

Answer 8

• This draws on the link to the war with France at this time.
  Symbolic metaphor; the blood running down palace walls signifies their sacrifice to protect the power of those who live in the palaces.
• “Palace walls”; the ordinary people living outside the palace can see the magnitude of loss and suffering but the rich living in the palaces are sheltered from it.

Question 9

Analysis - “mind-forged manacles”

Answer 9

• Alliteration of mind/manacles helps draw our attention to the metaphor.
• Blake is showing that these people are not physically held back, but their belief in their own weakness holds them back.

Question 10

Analysis - “plagues the marriage hearse”

Answer 10

• Oxymoron; juxtaposes the joy of marriage with the misery of death.
• In Georgian/Victorian England, marriage was more of a financial agreement than a celebration of love; “hearse” could suggest the death of love and its replacement with societal expectations and agreements.
• Blake is suggesting that society has destroyed all the good things in life.