Anna Tsai蔡宜均

Prof. Tsai

Class C 05121340

10/03/18

William Blake: the Criticize towards the Organized Institution

After the Industrial Revolution, it brings up the improvement in hygiene and medical

knowledge; however, the rise of popularity leads to the poverty in the society. In “the

Chimney Sweeper”, the young boy was sold and need to clean the chimney for living, and

nothing can change their situation only after they died. Also, during that time, the place

where William Blake lived was suffering under political oppression; therefore, he wrote

down “London” and strongly criticized the government and the organized church. Blake

described the people underprivileged, including prostitute, chimney sweeper, soldiers and so

on. The victims in the poem are also real people; however, he didn’t directly write down the

reality of the society but using symbolic to describe the misery of the people. The last stanza

of “London” is imagery of the vicious cycle of underprivileged, those people have no chance

to get to a better life, but keep being oppressed by the government. Another example in “the

Garden of Love”, it said “A Chapel was built in the midst”. William Blake didn’t directly tell

us that the church control and restrict the whole society, but we can imagine that something

which is in the middle will have deep influential towards other things.

William Blake described those conditions in his collection of song of innocence of

experience, but in different perspective. While in innocence, he used the aspect of child and

expressed the purity of their mind; however, in the experience, they reach their adulthood and

started to be bounded by the restriction of the organized church. In “the Garden of Love”, it

clearly describes this kind of situation. The garden of love represents the carefree childhood

of human being, and it symbols purity and innocence. However, the existence of the church

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restricts people’s free will and mind. In William Blake’s idea, Bible should free people’s life

but not become a kind of bond. William Blake uses garden as a symbol of the Garden of

Eden. The church considered the fall of the human as a kind of shame and repression;

therefore, any sexual act is forbidden. However, William Blake thought that human’s desire is

a show of nature, so it shouldn’t be limited. At the end of the poem, Blake used the death of

nature and freedom as a criticism towards the church.