Analysis Of The Songs Of Innocence And Experience By...

London in the late 18th century was full of poverty and corruption, according to poet William Blake. It was a city with no hope for poor people, and the government and church did little to help this. Among the poor were children working in slave-like conditions to feed their families and going to charity schools. Blake puts these children at the center of his piece to show the hypocritical nature of the church and how innocent people are suffering from it. He takes on two angles from the same topic: the event of Holy Thursday. By examining it from the lens of innocence, then experience, he shows the reader how important perspective is and how looking past the shiny exterior can reveal a more sinister scene underneath. In The Songs of†¦show more content†¦The other angle Blake examines Holy Thursday with is experience. This poem is much more straight forward about the horrors of poverty and the church’s relation to it. He believes that children are innocent beings and shouldn’t be just pitied, but helped to escape poverty for more than just a day. He shows this with strong imagery highlighting their difficult life and how unfair it is. Blake describes their life as a miserable place: And their son does never shine, And their fields are bleak and bare, And their ways are filled with thorns: It is eternal winter there. (ll. 9-12) By using this strong imagery he shows how horrendous their living conditions are and how being washed and made to sing in church is a small compensation for their lifetime of poverty. Another technique Blake uses is using rhetorical questions to ask the audience how natural and holy it is to see so many poor children. He leaves the morality up to the reader to ask themselves if this problem needs to be fixed. He only includes the questions in the Experience version because questioning things and looking deeper isn’t a theme in the Innocence poems. Innocence is about being content and embracing naivety. Blake also demonstrates how the children are being objectified in order to pity them and use them as a way to make the church seem charitable towardsShow MoreRelatedSongs Of Innocence And Of Experience By William Blake Analysis868 Words   |  4 PagesSongs of Innocence and of Experience is the foundation of the work of one of the greatest. English poets and artists. The two se ts of poems reveal what William Blake calls â€Å"the two contrary states of the human soul.† In both series, he offers clues to deeper meanings and suggests ways out of the apparent trap of selfhood, so that each reading provides greater insight and understanding, not only to the poems but also to human life. 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