quotes Flashcards
two days old - i happy am; joy is my name
Infant Joy:
children born happy and the world progressively corrupts innocence with its oppression and exploitation
juxtaposes idea of original sin - that we are born in need of atoning for our past sins
- instead argues that we are born happy and innocent
into the dangerous world i leapt, helpless, naked, piping loud
Infant Sorrow:
in media res of labour - painful and sweaty and unpleasant - children are born into a negative and oppressive world from their first breath
- children are completely alone - impossible to escape the imprisonment of oppression because everyone is born into it
i love to rise in a summer morn… birds sing… skylark sings with me
The Schoolboy:
-natural clock and primal living
- no capitalist pushing for productivity
- power of child-like imagination and innocent freedom
- you are only able to be free when you are innocent and before you are indoctrinated by capitalist ideas of labour, exploitation
-sibilance creates a dreamlike soundscape
drives all joy away… sighing and dismay… drooping… anxious… dreary
- imprisoned in oppressive education
- education in a society that prioritises profit imprisons you; not fun anymore
- work to earn rest and earn a living or luxuries, not just to survive anymore
- plosive /d/ alliteration connotes a miserable and oppressive lifestyle, full of industrial machinery
how can the bird that is born for joy sit in a cage and sing?
- metaphor: kids born with function to play and learn, like a bird born for freedom
- organised institutions such as formal education is a cage which imprisons them away from nature, strips individuality and coerces them into a world of experience where they’re units of learning to later be a more useful and subservient unit of production
if buds are nipped and blossoms blown away… how shall summer arise in joy?
- how can seasons change and the kids grow if their individuality and imagination is cut off as a child?
- futility of life and joy due to constant subjugation to higher authorities (school - work)
- childhood, growth and imagination likened to summer = bright, inviting and warm
- if foundations and unique qualities of humanity are cut off then how can children develop into fully grown individuals?
-idea that we teach children to remember and not to grow
mother taught me under a tree… took me in her lap and kissed me
The Little Black Boy - maybe not a UK church go so not the christocentric lens
- not a place of industrialisation in the south so more love and patience rather than desire for immediate profit
- black mother is nurturing and kind-hearted
- industrialisation and Britain have lost their ability to love and have compassion
- idyllic state of nature, nurtures love, freedom and compassion
I was born in the southern wild/
And I am black but O my soul is white
White as an angel is the English child
But I am black as if bereaved of light
western, ethnocentric assumption that anything marginal/ alternative is uncivilised
- internalised thought that white is superior and black is inferior - what society has taught him about prescribed characteristics for races, he ingests
-low self esteem as if he is missing something and there is something wrong with him - he feels alienated and wrong when it is society that is in the wrong. Yet innocent people pay for society’s mistakes
- slavery legal in Britain until 1833
- Blake was an ardent advocate for the abolition of slavery
quatrains have a nursery -rhyme child-like, playful nonchalance to them as if he has accepted his oppression as normality which is an effect of internalised oppression
- antediluvian notion that white is superior and god only loves white people as they are supposedly purer?
when I from black and he from white cloud free
In heaven, race and physical bodies no longer matter, so enduring hardships now is only temporary, and true equality will be achieved.
-Metaphor of Two black and white clouds emphasise racial segregation predominant in 18th cent society
-is the only way to escape the hardship of his life on earth death?
join upon our father’s knee… be like him and he will then love me
- even if god loves him, he will never be accepted into society
- the racial equality he seeks exhibits micro-aggressions and racial dominance so he will never live a life free from oppression, even in heaven
if he’s like the boy, he’ll be loved - the racial equality exhibits the racism that it preaches to rid itself of
And we are put on earth a little space / So that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
Little space - life is fleeting and transient
- we are put put - people in passive position no control over lives
- beams of love - makes love sound painful and difficult plosive /b/ emphasises pain
sun does shine… make happy the skies… merry bells ring to welcome the spring… birds of the bush sing louder
The echoing green:
- hope and happiness in the pastoral away from Urban oppression
- resisting Capitalist tyranny and promoting primal state of living that urbanisation wiped out
- birds = closer to heaven = pastoral is closer to heaven as you are not tempted by sin
- maypoles and traditions and sports shows community and how pastoral replaces Capitalism individualism for collectivism and community
old john… laugh away care… they laugh at our play… youth-time
adults in cities revel at and cause pain for kids while in the pastoral, they actively find joy in observing their contentment. no resentment = happy and privileged life = happy youth and the cycle continues hence rejecting the capitalist cycle corruption
- in the Edenic state of nature, we can find symbiosis
white hair - symbolic of purity innocence and closeness to heaven
1st stanza: On the echoing green
last stanza: little ones weary… sun does descend… on the darkening green
- ecchoing green x2 has a sense of the endless cycle of life and thriving in the countryside
- darkening suggests that this must end and death will come upon all regardless of age or class - they think their time and joy is perpetual but it is transient
- Or impending Industrialialisation coming to the country - urbanisation of green spaces
- could simply be acceptance of natural cycle of life, this is the way things ought to be ; in order for humans to find peace and harmony they should stop rejecting nature and instead embrace it: this is where we come from after all.
voices of children… on the green… laughing… heart is at rest within my breast
Motif of “Green” throughout Blake’s innocence songs -pastoral imagery suggests nature is where we can be in harmony and closest to god
- my heart is at rest - peace and symbiosis. `anyone can find freedom and happiness in natural world; it is urbanisation and industrialisation that corrupts innocence not simply growing older
- perhaps because they are privileged enough to live in country they are sheltered from experience of outer world and living in state of ignorance rather than simply innocence
- These children’s freedom juxtaposes with the entrapment of the little chimney sweeps who are already working at same age, or the schoolboy who has been coerced into capitalist machine of organised institutions in order to become productive to society when older
- these children are free from capitalist machine and therefore happy
come, come my children… no, no let us play
well well go and play, till the light fades away
- epizeuxis and possessive, positively gently, nurturing
gives up and lets them have their freedom
sun is gone down… The little ones leaped and shouted and laughed
- eco-critical statement of how you can live and appreciate a life when connected to nature as you are free from societal constraints
- clipped ending yet their youth and play echoes as if they have all the time in the world to be young
- endless childhood
- /L/ alliteration sounds like a lullaby
‘Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean/ The children walking two and two in red and blue and green.
Alludes to Noah’s ark - christian doctrine
The innocent voice speaks in rhyming couplets, showing how the christian doctrine of noah’s ark, of two and two has been engrained into speaker, blindly following orders of church
- faces only cleaned for this one public display - kids are only cared for when they are externally presented
- oppression occurs only in the private sphere then halted in public as reputation is at stake!
- advertising altruism of the church
- colours of the union jack but green is of envy and money
- shows how the exploitation as children will lead to greed and jealousy in their older years like the beadles which creates the perpetual cycle of victims to villains
- or green for bruises where the ‘wands’ are whips
wand as phallic and paedophilic - figures of authority are supposed to care for you and they exploit them here for their own power/benefit - those who are supposed to be most selfless are the most selfish
- ascension day
O! what a multitude they seemed
these flowers of London Town
- flowers can bloom but are fated to die in the natural cycle of life which shows how nature is subservient to the cycle of life and similarly, the kids are subservient to society’s function and exploitation.
Repetition of multitude, shows how many children are impoverished in London; worsens greed of the old “guardians of the poor” - interjection - horror at multitude of children disguised as awe
beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor
- position indicates moral decay
- perpetual confinement and oppression that transcends generations
- house of commons who are supposed to guard them but fail to do so
- or god supposed to help the poor
criticises faith and religion in times of agony and poverty - oppression is internal as well as just external, thus we are trapped in own minds
The cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door
Ironic didactic message; shows greed of rich, only care for poor for their own selfish sake
My father sold me while yet my tongue / Could scarcely cry weep, weep , weep ,weep
- dominance of parent’s ownership has alienated him and trapped in a transaction against will
epizeuxis of weep creates desperate and tragic tone, reflecting miserable life of boy. Also may be a mispronunciation of sweeps, as so engrained in boy’s brain
So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep
- alienation internally oppresses him as identity and life reduced to soot which psychologically tells him his is worth nothing more and must fulfil his duty
- Direct adress to reader, rhetorical device to make readers see how awful the exploitation of these chimney sweeps are and that their complicity also holds them responsible for exploitation and abuse of these children
Head that curled like a lamb’s back was shaved… soot cannot spoil your white hair
allusion of biblical tradition of sacrificing innocent lamb; emphasises Tom’s innocence and how society exploits and abuses the innocent
- early death is fated
- blindly subjugated to work to their death
- children turned into units of labour and lost all life power
- sacrifice unique identities to become collective
soot double entendre: also a symbol of evil in judo-christian mythology, emphasises inhumanity and corruption of those that exploit young children for own benefit
contrasting of black and white colour symbolises journey from innocence to experience
Thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned and jack were all of them locked up in coffins of black
Multitude - exploitation and oppression is rampant
– commonality of the names removes the poem from the personal perspective of this boy and allows him to speak for a magnitude of oppressed children - a mouthpiece
- chimney sweeping is so dangerous, and has such fatal effects for internal organs it is effectively a death sentence
angel who has a bright key… set them all free… green plain… wash in a river and shine in the sun
- UPC only ingest his poems = critique their blindness to it and expose their complicity in oppression
- only freedom is in death as oppressed so heavily in life
- shows naive indoctrination of christian notion that if they endure suffering in life then they will be rewarded in heaven
Angel told Tom if he’d be a good boy, he’d have God for his father and never want joy… if all do their duty, they need not fear harm
- critiques coercion of the church
- internalised church’s wishes to conform to suffering in hopes of love from god and justifies their oppression
- church corrupted by capitalism and the desire to generate more profit, regardless of human cost
“want” double entendre, coud mean lack but also desire, so tom will never desire joy
A little black thing among the snow… crying ‘weep, weep’
- alienated as units of work
- identity and good emotions stripped to leave negative ones in abundance
- shell of a child
- dehumanised as a ‘thing’ = no emotions, no feelings and therefore no consequences
weep weep again sounds like sweep - monotonous repetition of their labour
Both gone up the church to pray… because I was happy upon the heath… clothed me in clothes of death
- critique adult figures who prioritise the church and abandon their children
- church corrupts people into neglecting their children to be used to maximise profit to the point that they fate their children to die
- children = socially exploited bc parents are religiously exploited by the church
His parents praise God and his priest and king // who make up a heaven of our misery
and his priest and king // who make up a heaven of our misery
- God finds joy in the suffering of the exploitation of children and parents blindly praise him for it
- church finds a place of power, comfort and dominance in others’ misery
- church strips goodness from people rather than making people the best version of themselves
- the church’s values are skewed
- power-hunger is dominant in God and therefore innate in humanity
-heavily ironic as church should be about charity and kindness not oppression and misery.
thus criticises institutionalised religion
O Rose, thou art sick…
The invisible worm that flies through the night
-rose is conventional symbol of love. shows how love can die or become corrupt
- roses bloom like women but die and wilt like how women are subservient and diseased by male corruption and desire, for example women suffer from men’s sexual infidelity for bringing back diseases from prostitutes. Also seen in London “blights with plagues the marriage hearse.”
phallic symbol, men destroy the lives of women thanks to own selfish desire
invisible, men can get away with their deeds.embedded into rhythm of life.
Dark secrets does they life destroy
- female reputations = destroyed at the cost of male corruption
- their fault even if it isn’t (SA culture now)
- inevitable that women will be corrupted and diseased by men - it is the cycle of nature/life.
