This is a rough free write about ideas I have for the interpretive essay. Do you think that this is a good foundation/concept for one?



“The Chimney Sweeper”, by William Blake makes me feel sad.It's supposed to sound like it's about the freedom of heaven. The concept that if you live a good life and with the lord, you will sit with the lord in heaven, and you will no longer be sad. However, do to the time it was written it's hard for me to believe that they are praising God and the beliefs of the church.

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!"

So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

In the first stanza Blake writes,"And my father sold me while yet my tongue" (2). I'm assuming that his mother dies and he was sold before he could even talk. I am assuming by the first stanza that he was sold to a chimney sweeping company. In the way the poem was written, he doesn't sound sad. It sounds more like he is simply trying to give background information.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,

That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,

"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare,

You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

In the second stanza the original boy is talking about another boy who has been bought by the chimney sweepers. Tom had to have his head shaved, so his hair wouldn't get ruined by the soot. The boy was very upset about it.


And so he was quiet, and that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! --

That thousands of sweepers, Joe, Ned, and Jack,

Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.


The boy decide to be quiet, and he had a dream that night about thousands of sweepers, including his friends. They were all in black coffins perhaps literally to represent their deaths in the dream, or perhaps to show that they were trapped in their lives as chimney sweeps.

And by came an angel, who had a bright key,

And he opened the coffins, and let them all free;

Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run,

And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Blake wrote, "And by came an angel, who had a bright key" (13). Angels represent guidance. This religious figure set them free. This says to me that religion will set you free. This stanza says to me that if you turn to religion, you will be set free. You will be happy, clean, and the sun will always shine on you.



Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,

They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind;

And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,

He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.

This stanza is where the angel start with stipulations. The angel tells him that he has to be a good boy. If he's good he'll have God for his father. Still this boy does not have unconditional love. In death he will only have a father and be loved if he's good.



And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,

And got with our bags and our brushes to work.

Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:


So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
Tom has been sucked in by the belief that if he is good everything will be amazing in death. He has to perform his duty. Live in fear of is future in heaven. Blake wrote, "So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm"(24). What is their duty? To be a slave to a chimney sweep company? It sounds more like a brain washing tactic that the chimney sweep company used to get him to be a good little slave. This poem sounds happy at first but after further reading it sounds more like a poem about oppression.

I think that you have done a good job in doing a rough analyzing and interpretation of the stanzas as well as the whole poem. I am looking forward to your taking the next step. What specific instructions where you given to writing this interpretive essay, please?

This is very long, but here were my instructions:

When you are asked to perform a reading of a text, essentially you must provide your own interpretation of a piece of literature. There are innumerable ways to perform a reading of a text, but each requires that you put a sort of “lens” over the piece that will color each detail in a particular way. To explain, imagine looking at the world through a pair of glasses that contained bright yellow lenses. Naturally, everything you see would be tinted in a different way than if you wore red lenses or no lenses at all. The same is true of completing a reading of a text- it makes certain features of the text stand out, shows particular words and events to be more relevant than others, and leads to an individual interpretation of the meaning of the text. That is the aim of this paper.

To successfully offer a reading of the paper, you must elect one perspective and ensure that your perspective is clear from the start of the paper and consistent throughout. If you performed, for example, a feminist reading of Tennyson's “Lady of Shalott,” you wouldn't throw in a section that suggests that we read the poem from a Marxist perspective. The important thing is that your lens or perspective is explained near the beginning of the paper. The remainder of the paper would work out the relevance of that reading to various aspects of the piece you're looking at. Your perspective must be viable. Do not try and stretch your view to do more than it can. If there are things your perspective does not account for, admit these as concessions to your point. Consider your goal here to convince your audience that your perspective offers new insight to the text you're examining.

Most readings are rooted in either a theoretical approach (as mentioned above—Feminist/Marxist) or a particularly debatable matter on the piece, an area where people often disagree or differ in their reading. There have been many of these areas in our discussions this semester, so I imagine you won't have trouble finding a starting point.
To solidify your understanding of this type of paper, I've posted a sample reading of Beckett's play “Endgame” on BB under links and documents.