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William Blake, A Dissenter
William Blake, A Dissenter
Songs
of
Innocence
and
Experience:
Casebook,
to
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what can be drawn from it is that the care that these children receive
is far away from what it should be. What Blake criticizes here is that
the cold and usurious hand that nourishes the children is only
motivated by self-interest, rather than from compassion or love as
one may expect it to be. As it could be appreciated in the poem, the
children are participating in a public exhibition of joy but the reality
is that this does not reflect the actual circumstances of the infants. In
a scene where the kids are, apparently happy, attending church on a
holy day, what is behind their clean faces is another reality: the true
is that they were receiving a painful and precarious care. The public
presentation of children suggests only the hypocrisy of religion
institutionalized; the Christian charity which is presumed by the
rulers of the Church is far away from being compassion for the poor
but only pure appearance.
In the same sense, Blake produced a critique of the urban
poverty and misery suffered by the city of London, a city which at
first glance was developed politically and socially. Therefore, Blake
states that the misery of Londoners was not simply displeasure or
discomfort; he found that it was death following disease, disease
which could not be cured because it was neither acknowledged
socially nor understood. At this point, it is emphasized that the
author wanted to reach the ears of the people to make them aware
about what was happening in the 18th century English society. Blake
wanted to expose the reality of a society that boasted of being so
advanced when beneath the carpet there was only hypocrisy and
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his
countrymen
prided
themselves,
and
exposes
the
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and Experience. Ed.
Lincoln, Andrew. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
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ONLINE SOURCES
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-blake
http://www.enotes.com/topics/songs-innocence-experience/criticalessays