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Discuss the theme of exploitation in "The Chimney Sweeper."
Quick answer:
The theme of exploitation dominates “The Chimney Sweeper.” In both poems of the same name, Blake attempts to highlight the appalling working conditions that these children are forced to endure and the damaging effects that these conditions have on them.
"The Chimney Sweeper" appears in Blake's Songs of Innocence. We would expect it to be in Songs of Experience since it is a poem about exploitation of young children. However, the narrator, a young chimney sweep, is still innocent. He tells the story of his mother dying young and the father who "sold" him into chimney sweeping when he could hardly talk. He describes the conditions the chimney sweepers live in: sleeping in soot, having their heads shaved, rising before dawn in the cold, and going to work in dark places with their scrub brushes.
He dreams of an angel who "sets free" the chimney sweeps:
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
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