Karla Fernández Mora

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Exercise on Marxist Criticism

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER by William Blake (1789)

In this poem by William Blake, the ruling class confines a boy to be a chimney sweeper
from a young age, sold to the capitalistic system as if a piece of machinery and not a
human being. Parting from Marx’s theory, the base of the poem is the struggles of the
working class (the sweepers), whereas the superstructure is the power that the State and
Religion hold over the sweepers.
For instance, in order to do a proper job, the little boy’s head is shaven. This
gesture is a false merciful act and in reality, a condemn. He is unknowingly being
oppressed by the State, as cutting his hair is a sign of how the boy must oblige his duty
as a sweeper, reinforcing his low position in society. Nonetheless, this oppression is not
perceived as such by the boy, but rather as a form of mercy to prevent his “white hair”
from getting dirty.
In the following stanza, the outcome of the oppression comes to Tom Dacre in
the form of a dream. He sees all his “brother sweepers” in coffins, presumably, as the
reader would imagine, dead. Notwithstanding, the perception of the dream suddenly
turns when Religion is depicted as the salvation of all the sweepers, promising them a
land of green, laughter and light. But in reality, this promise is condition: they will only
achieve such heavenly prospect if they do their job properly and are “good boys”.
Once Tom awakens from his dream, he is fervently inclined on doing a good
job, as the Angel told him to do, so that he may have his reward. In the end, the power
of religion is reiterated, and thus, the superstructure of the will and force of the State to
preserve the oppression and abuse of its workers in order to maintain its power intact.
The forms of alienation depicted in this poem are: the Ideological or Cultural
Alienation, which states that human beings are deceived and lead to believe in false
forms of satisfaction, away from happiness (Tom and the other sweepers being tricked
by society into working under oppression); and on the other hand, the Psychological
alienation, in which human beings loose their individual and social identities while
struggling for survival (the sweepers ceasing to be human beings to become tools for
the State).