young boy in overalls and a hat walking with a chimney sweeping broom over his shoulder

The Chimney Sweeper

by William Blake

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Discuss the theme of exploitation in "The Chimney Sweeper."

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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.

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"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.
To Blake, young children should expect such an ordinary childhood of playing in nature under the sun, but to the chimney sweep, it is a glimpse of paradise. 
The heartbreak in the poem arises from the slippage between the chimney sweeper's innocence in believing that "a good boy" achieves "joy," and the reader's awareness of the reality that for chimney sweepers "joy" is unlikely. 
The chimney sweeper's innocence extends to the last line:"So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm."
The reader knows that the chimney sweep, vulnerable and unprotected, has every reason to fear harm. But the line carries a deeper meaning: if "all," including a society willing to avert its eyes to the lives of the chimney sweeps, would, in fact, do its "duty," it would not need to "fear harm." Blake thus warns readers of their responsibility not to exploit the weak and defenseless.

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