The Chimney Sweeper: Innocence or Experience?

Question 1

Blake delivers a blunt condemnation to organised religion which “make up a heaven” of the Sweep’s misfortune

Answer 1

Experience

Question 2

Blake uses the promise of granted happiness in the after life to criticise religious doctrine

Answer 2

Innocence

Question 3

Repetition of “weep” which speaker can “scarcely cry” evokes immediate pathos

Answer 3

Innocence

Question 4

Structured into six quatrains which follow an AABB rhyme scheme

Answer 4

Innocence

Question 5

Structured intro three quatrains; the first compromised of closed rhyming couplets, the other two follow an ABAB rhyme scheme

Answer 5

Experience

Question 6

Symbolic setting if a rural paradise contrasts sharply with the reality of the chimney sweeping world

Answer 6

Innocence

Question 7

Symbolise setting of winter is suggestive of the child’s transition from innocence to experience of a cold, cruel world

Answer 7

Experience

Question 8

The child speaker is aware of their exploitation

Answer 8

Experience

Question 9

The child speaker is unaware of their exploitation

Answer 9

Innocence

Question 10

The child is accepting of his situation where this is little hope for escape

Answer 10

Experience

Question 11

The child speaker tells readers of his bitterness towards his parents, who have abandoned him

Answer 11

Experience

Question 12

The colour black contrasts sharply with the colour imagery used in the child speaker’s dream

Answer 12

Innocence

Question 13

The contrast of the blackness of the child and the whiteness of the snow suggests corruption

Answer 13

Experience

Question 14

The final line is suggestive of the child’s acknowledgement of a false religious premise

Answer 14

Experience

Question 15

The inclusion of the names of the sweeps personalise the poem

Answer 15

Innocence

Question 16

The parents seem to use religion as a justification for letting their child live in degradation

Answer 16

Experience

Question 17

The poem’s adult speaker evokes our sympathy for the sweep in the opening line

Answer 17

Experience

Question 18

The reference to a shorn lamb reminds readers of the concept of sacrifice and the loss of childhood innocence

Answer 18

Innocence

Question 19

The uncomplaining general terms in which the child speaker tells his story suggests the level of insensibility that his society has reached

Answer 19

Innocence

Question 20

The vision of joy in stanza three is a reward which keeps the sweeps obedient and dutiful

Answer 20

Innocence

Question 21

“They clothed me in the clothes of death”

Answer 21

Experience

Question 22

“He’d have God for his father and never want joy”

Answer 22

Innocence

Question 23

“A green plain”

Answer 23

Innocence

Question 24

A dramatic monologue

Answer 24

Innocence

Question 25

The speaker is a vocal social critic

Answer 25

Experience

Question 26

“Make up a heaven of our misery”

Answer 26

Experience

Question 27

“Gone up to the church to pray”

Answer 27

Experience

Question 28

“If all do their duty they need not fear harm”

Answer 28

Innocence

Question 29

“Taught me to sing the notes of woe”

Answer 29

Experience

Question 30

“When my mother died I was very young”

Answer 30

Innocence

Question 31

“Curled like a lamb’s back”

Answer 31

Innocence

Question 32

“Naked and white”

Answer 32

Innocence

Question 33

“They are gone to praise God and his Priest and King”

Answer 33

Experience

Question 34

“Smil’d upon the winters snow”

Answer 34

Experience

Question 35

All of them locked up in coffins of black”

Answer 35

Innocence

Question 36

“Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm”

Answer 36

Innocence

Question 37

“Where are thy father and mother? Say,”

Answer 37

Experience