The narrator of this poem is a young child who is a chimney sweep, meaning he is sent down narrow chimneys to clean them. He introduces himself in the first stanza as someone who lost his mother very young and then was "sold" by his father as a chimney sweep almost before he could talk. This means his father, who was probably very poor, was paid a fee for allowing the boy to become a sweep.
The poem is particularly powerful because it is told in the voice of an innocent young child who doesn't fully understand the wrong that has been done to him. Chimney sweeps were kept half starved so they would be thin enough to fit down the chimneys and often died young of cancer because of their constant contact with soot.
The emotional impact of the poem relies on the slippage between the adult readers' understanding...
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that the child will have a sad life, and the narrator's own faith, relayed through a dream of his friend Tom (if the chimney sweeps are good, God will give them joy).
In "The Chimney Sweeper," who is the speaker?
A child of perhaps seven is the speaker of Blake's subtle poem. For, it is with a poignant naivete that the boy relates the trials that the "climbing boys," as they were called, suffer. And, with the use of this child's voice, Blake craftily points to the horrible conditions under which these boys work when the only solace they can seek is that in dreams or in death.
And by came an angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
In addition, Blake is able to create a pun with the little boy's mispronunciation, something he could not have done if his voice were that of the speaker.
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
Thus, he plays upon the association of the sweepers' weeping because of their pitiful existence.