Question
3:
Discuss the ways in which Blake uses a central image (a central metaphor; a key
symbol) and then expands on it.
Poet
William Blake, through his poems from Songs of Experience, ‘London’ and ‘The Human Abstract’, uses a
central image to analyze the society of the time
‘London’ is Blake’s vehicle to foreground
the situation of the marginalized people, through a first-person point of view.
The speaker wanders through the streets of London, and comments on his observations.
Using this first person vantage point, Blake is able to put the reader into the
shoes of the persona, giving the reader a look at the city through their own
figurative eyes. Blake can therefore give the reader a look at the streets of London through his eyes, and create
stronger images in the mind of the reader.
In the
first stanza of ‘London’, Blake uses poetic language and repetition as a record of the poem’s
time and place. The speaker wanders through ‘charter’d’ streets, alongside a
‘charter’d’ Thames. This use of ‘charter’d’ and
repetition suggests to the reader that the streets the speaker wanders are well
defined and lay out. This image of ‘charter’d streets’ conveys a sense of well
defined and set boundaries. Through this image Blake presents to the reader a
controlled, restrictive city.
Blake uses
repetition in his first stanza of ‘London’ when he tells of the mood of the
people he sees. He describes the ‘marks’ on each person’s face, telling of
‘marks of weakness’ and ‘marks of woe’. This repetition of the ‘marks’ emphasizes
an image of guilt and grief, and an atmosphere of gloom. This literal
descriptive image of the guilt and grief on the faces of the people, and also
the image of the controlled and restricted streets, create a figurative image
of a controlled and restrictive society who are bound by metaphorical shackles,
and a lack of freedom. Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the
poem, and it serves to emphasize the prevalence or the horrors the speaker
describes.
The second
stanza of ‘London’ goes on to challenge the marginalized people’s bondage, asking if this
bondage is merely a metaphorical barrier, created only in the mind of the
people. In everything that the speaker hears, he can only hear of ‘mind-forged
manacles’. These manacles are the handcuffs that keep the marginalized people
in bondage, and the speaker suggests that these are metaphorical and have been
forged by the mind. These manacles consist of the guilt and grief by which
these marginalized people are bound, and Blake suggests that this guilt and
grief is figurative and lies only in the mind of these people.
The third
stanza creates an imagery of a polluted city where these marginalized people live.
From history, we know that children were given the laborious task to clean
chimneys out. ‘How the Chimney-sweepers cry,’ suggests that this work comes
with serious health hazards, with many children workers suffering from cancer.
Blake uses this imagery of children suffering to maintain impact on the reader,
as children are seen as naïve and innocent. Blake uses a contrast in the line
“Every blackening Church appalls,” as normally churches are portrayed as
something holy, safe and pure yet they turn a blind eye to the people’s
despair. This contrast is Blake pointing out the hypocrisy in man.
The last stanza of ‘London’
again uses imagery of children to gloom of the situation. “How the youthful
harlots curse”, demonstrates that times are hard and for some people the only
means of survival is to sell their bodies for money. The word ‘newborn’,
normally associated with life, has a downcast meaning in ‘Blasts the new-born
Infant’s tear’. The poem closes with ‘And blights with plagues the Marriage
hearse’, in which Blake indicates the forlorn times ahead for these people by
using the word ‘hearse’, associated with death, with ‘marriage’. Blake suggests
that even when these people marry, they are still destined to a life of
hopelessness and strife because of the collusion of the wealthy to maintain
status in the social hierarchy.