what is the poem "The chimney sweeper" about?

Question

i think it is about an orphan boy who is dying in the snow. im not sure please help.

Answer 1

The Chimney Sweeper is about a little boy whose parents have sent him to work as a chimney sweeper, which was pretty common back in the day. Chimney sweepers literally climbed into chimneys in big factories to sweep out the soot--so before child labor laws, little kids used to do it for pennies a day. When the poem says "taught me to sing the songs of woe..." he means that when he sweeps, that's the sound the broom makes: weep, weep. And the clothes of death means that he was wearing black. Well, even if they didn't wear black, the clothes would become black from all the soot. Often the parents could not find work so the kids took jobs like this to help the family survive. Parents thought this was OK--until of course kids started dropping dead from lung problems and other injuries in the factories. So his parents are in church, thinking he's fine. But of course, he isn't. Being a chimney sweep is no picnic. So the "clothes of death" has a bit of a double meaning there.

Answer 2

The poem is narrated by a chimney sweeper. He tells us a little bit about himself first before giving us the lowdown on another chimney sweeper, Tom Dacre. After introducing us to Tom, he relates a very strange dream that Tom had one night (it involved chimney sweepers in coffins, angels, flying, and a few other bizarre things). The poem concludes with Tom and the speaker waking up and going to work, sweepin' chimneys. Like they do.
Bellow is a video of the Chimney sweeper story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcw27cNsAI

Answer 3

Chimney Sweeper Poem

Answer 4

In The Chimney Sweep, Blake had thematized the Christian belief in a providence that compensates for temporal pain or lack. Blake, taking a characteristically dim view of this providential myth, uses this poem to contrast the grim daily reality of the sweepers' lives with their vivid compensatory dreams. The result is a poem in which the caustic irony of "experience" may be sensed through the veil of "innocence."

The Chimney Sweeper makes that irony explicit. This poem clearly denounces the Church, as evidenced in his depiction of the child sweeper dying in the snow while his parents are in church. The poem depicts the reality of the child's fate, despite the angel's promise and the child's sense of duty. In fact, the poem could not be more explicit on the manner in which parents, king, and Church collude to build a hell on earth.

In The Chimney Sweeper of Songs of Innocence, while conveying the misery of the young victims of society, Blake emphasizes the contentment and sense of security of the soot-covered boys. Most chimney sweepers from this time were abandoned children of prostitutes or orphans. In Blake's poem, a chimney sweeper named Tom dreams of an angel who comes with a bright light to raise all the boys from black coffins; but in Songs of Experience the poem with the same title emphasizes the misery of the chimney sweepers who live in dirt and soot, as a result of which many died prematurely of diseases like tuberculosis or cancer, and some even died of suffocation or asphyxiation. Their dirty dress looks like the 'clothes of death' and they seek work in 'notes of woe'. This line also illustrates the irony of the thought of earning God's love. This is a commentary on the maxim spread among the working children that hard work reaps eternal rewards. This thought is contradictory to the christian principle of God's unconditional love.

The child's parents sell him and live on the boy's hardship. They go to the church to pray, while the child starves and freezes. The King, who is supposed to look after them, is no less complacent. Even the church is not worried about them. So, the poor boy sings: "They think they have done me no injury, / And are gone to praise God and His Priest and King / Who make upon a Heaven of our misery."

Blake satirizes not only the parents but also the Church which represents itself as the guardian of children and the poor, but actually collaborates with the exploiters of the children.

Answer 5

it's pretty obvious. it's about the horrible child labor conditions in victorian england.

Answer 6

Have you looked at it at all?