The chimney sweeper Flashcards
Form and structure
Six quatrains
The rhyming couplet (AABB) rhyme scheme to convey a unity between the children - shared suffering.
The poem is set out in quatrains with rhyming couplets. The simplicity of the form and the reassuring immediacy of the rhyme scheme are at odds with the horror of the circumstances being depicted.
The strong tetrameter, combined of iambs and anapests, conveys a lilting rhythm, giving a nursery rhyme effect
The child’s voice frames the poem and embeds the voices of Tom and the Angel.
The child’s mother is dead and his father betrays the child for money
- The sweep configures a ‘new’ family around the other boys and Tom’s vision where ‘He’d have God for his father’
Settings - contrast between ‘coffins of black’, the green plain, river, Sun, clouds and wind, and the cold, dark morning
Structure - the vision is embedded within the harsh conditions of child labour (mimics the child enclosed in the chimney, the soul within the body).
Summary
A poem told from the perspective of a chimney sweep, a young boy living in 1700s London who has to earn a living doing the dangerous work of cleaning soot from people’s chimneys.
- The child’s narration is initially retrospective…
- The repetition of the possessive determiner’my’ is…
- His later use of present tense reinforces his ongoing fate.
His history is one of early deprivation, which could not be vocalised as an infant.
ironic in the face of abandonment and betrayal as conveyed in ‘died’ and ‘sold me’. (AO3) Some parents sold their children into employment on the mistaken assumption that they would receive food and lodging which the family was unable to provide. Either way, a background of extreme poverty and deprivation was the lot of many children living in this era.
The ‘lamb’ is…
- However, ‘lambs’ are also…
The juxtaposition in’soot cannot spoil your white hair’….
The use of sibilance (as well as in the previous stanza) in’soot cannot spoil’ gives dictions of negativity a softness to present the speaker as hopeful.
a biblical symbol which symbolises innocence and purity to reinforce the youthfulness of the children.
sacrificial animals which may create fear for the fate of the speaker, as when paired with imagery of exposure in ‘shav’d’ and ‘bare’, we fear the boy will be exposed to experience.
- colours of black and white - conveys the battle between the sins of forced labour in chimney sweeping and the good and hope of the children.
The syndetic list of ‘Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack’
conveys common, simple names (as depiected by the monosyllables) to suggest they are disposable and interchangeable as many children were during this time - a universality.
The semantic field of the Garden of Eden (‘bright’, ‘free’, ‘green plain’, ‘river’, ‘Sun’)…
shows unity with nature and hope in a new freedom.
The final line is satirical and corrupt - the ‘Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy, / He’d have God for his father & never want joy’
the God in reference is the Old Testament God has conditional love - he loves and punishes.
