London - William Blake

Question 1

Themes? (3)

Answer 1

Oppression, Power, Corruption

Question 2

Tones? (3)

Answer 2

Personal, Possessive, Reflective

Question 3

Context? (3)

Answer 3

• Poem was published in 1794, at a time of great poverty in many parts of London.
• Blake was an English poet and artist.
  Much of his work was influenced by his radical political views: he believed in social and racial equality.
• This poem is part of the ‘Songs of
  Experience’ collection, which focuses
  on how innocence is lost, and society
  is corrupt.

Question 4

Meaning and purpose? (3)

Answer 4

• The narrator is describing a walk around London and how he is saddened by the sights and sounds of poverty.
• The poem also addresses the loss of innocence and the determinism of inequality: how newborn infants are born into poverty.
• The poem uses rhetoric (persuasive
  techniques) to convince the reader that the people in power (landowners, Church, Government) are to blame for this inequality.

Question 5

Language? (8)

Answer 5

• The verb “wander” makes the walk seem almost casual or aimless. This helps make the misery that follows seem like an everyday kind of misery—this world of poverty and pain is just what people will find in London whenever they walk through it.
• Sensory language creates an immersive effect:
• Rhetorical devices to persuade:
  repetition (‘In every..’); emotive language (‘infant’s cry of fear’).
• antanaclasis of ‘mark’ helps develop the sense that everyone is marked by
  London’s oppression—all the regular folk that live there have to suffer
• Metonym: the “Palace,”represents the authority of the State. Facing the difficult economic circumstances of London, the soldier is forced to exchange the value of his life for a wage.
• The sibilance in “hapless Soldiers sigh” sounds like someone exhaling.
• metaphorical presence of soldiers’ blood on the palace walls suggests that the palace owes its existence to the soldiers’ bodily sacrifice
• The assonance of “harlots,”“blasts,” and “infants,” has a violent loudness.

Question 6

Form? ()

Answer 6

• The capitalization of “Man” and
  “Infants”—these are stand-ins for
  every man, every infant.
• The anaphora of the repeated “in
  every” shows just how wide- spread
  the problems are, and also helps
  widen the poem to be about the
  condition of humankind more
  generally.

Question 7

Structure? (3)

Answer 7

• Simple ABAB rhyme scheme: reflects the unrelenting misery of the city, and perhaps the rhythm of his feet as he trudges around the city
• iambic tetrameter, creating the sense of somebody walking with a regular pace. This rhythm is broken in line 4, which begins with a trochee to make the “marks” sudden and imposing and is also missing a syllable (it has seven as opposed to eight). This reflects the way that the pained faces of the Londoners have impeded upon the speaker’s steady pace, causing the speaker to stumble.
• The third stanza is an acrostic, with the first letters of each line spelling out that very same word: “HEAR.” This imperative verb, is a kind of
  imprisoned plea.