FREE ESSAY ON CRITICAL APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM BLAKES LONDON

CRITICAL APPRECIATION OF WILLIAM BLAKES LONDON

22nd September 2000
A Critical appreciation of William Blake's London.
William Blake who lived in the latter half of the eighteenth 
century and the early part of the nineteenth century was a poet, 
a philosopher, a radical, an artist, and a great thinker; who 
was able to bring about remarkable results with the simplest of means in all of his work.
He wrote his poems with deep personal emotions but if we look further and ignore the
prophetic qualities we discover a further intended meanings of a strong political and
social level. He was a critic of his own era but his poetry also strikes a chord in ours.
He was one of several poets of the time who restored emotion and feelings into poetry,
and so was one of the first romantics. Blake lived during a period of intense social
changes, the industrial revolution, the French revolution and the American revolution all
happened during his lifetime. Blake was witness to the transformation of a agricultural
society to an industrial society, which is where the basis for some of his poems stand. 
As an example, we may look towards William Blake's London from his songs of experience,
here Blake comments on a city he both loves and hates, it shows his disapproval of
changes which occurred in his times. Blake describes the woes that the Industrial
revolution and the breaking of the common mans ties to the land results in. He uses many
methods to gain the perfect description of how he saw industrial London but the most
outstanding method is his use of imagery. 
His first use of imagery is the first and second lines of the first stanza, he uses the
words charter'd streets and charter'd Thames. A charter is a legal document which gives
legal powers to the council of a town or city which allows them to be able to create
there own laws within the boundaries of that place. The imagery suggests that not only do
the streets of London have to follow the rules but that the River Thames has to be
regulated as well. The lawmakers have tamed and controlled a free flowing river. This use
of imagery emphasises that everything in the city including natural forces are enslaved
by the city. In the next line, Marks of weakness, marks of woe, there could be a play on
words, Mark means both to see or to notice but then again there could be another meaning;
like a physical mark upon someone's face like a sign of grief or misery. The use of the
word mark I think, is deliberately repeated to sound like the blows of a hammer. Blake
uses this imagery to emphasise the pain which industrial London is enforcing on the poor,
physically and mentally.
The use of mind-forg'd manacles in line 8 is used to describe why the people are so
unhappy, this is because they are not free as there lives are being controlled by
oppressive or restrictive ideas within their own minds and created by the minds of
others. Also by using the manacle the word sounds heavy, just like their plight.
Black'ning Church appalls is a vivid and chilling image. The church could be blackened
literally because of the soot from London's chimneys, or it could be because the sun is
setting and the outline of the church can be seen in the fading light. Blake's use of
Black'ning could be symbolic; the church which should be a source of moral warmth and
light, is seen as cold and dark. There could be another meaning to the word appalls like
a pall over a coffin so it is used to emphasise that the church ignores what it doesn't
want to see. Another shocking and surprising image is Runs in blood. This is where the
wounded soldier's blood is running down the walls of the rulers for which he has been
fighting, so it emphasises the fact that the poor were being blocked out by the
government with no means to live, and many to die.
The youthful harlots curse is a contradicting image which makes you think how could a
harlot be youthful? It shows that even children were subjected to the crimes of London.
The curse could be seen in two ways, it could be that she is literally swearing but it
could also mean that the unhappy girl is cursing or blaming the hard, cold world she is
living in.
the most powerful use of imagery in this poem to me is the oxymoron, blights with sighs
the marriage hearse, and image in which opposites collide with one another. A hearse, a
vehicle for carrying the dead to the grave being used for marriage. Sighs are also more
likely to be heard at funerals than marriages, but here Blake mixes the two together. At
one level it could be that Blake is arguing that it is wrong for prostitution to exist in
the same society as a respectable legal marriage. At another it could be that he is
suggesting that men do go to prostitutes where marriage is cold and unloving, or where
sexually repressed. Yet, at another level , blight can mean diseased, and in the
eighteenth century STD's were common, and could be fatal. The hearse could be a real one.
In whatever context it was written it is a particularly strong line which symbolises the
death or wrong doing in industrial London.
Blake uses much imagery of darkened things to stress how bleak and gloomy life is, with
no light at the end of the tunnel.
The rhythm of the poem is very slow and pounding which emphasises the darkness of London
and the pace of London at the time. The punctuation in the poem increases the slowness,
which enhances the effect of being trapped in a world and there being no way to escape.
The rhyme scheme is constant throughout the poem which adds to the constant pounding
which is also achieved through Blake's use of iambic pentameter. His repetition of the
word every in the second stanza seems to stress the pounding of the poem further.
Blake's use of imagery, repetition, punctuation and rhyme all work together to produce a
powerful work of art in my eyes. It shows how times really were in London and how it was
impossible to break out of the manacles which society had set for the poor.
London and many of Blake's other works with a similar theme, particularly those from
songs of experience strike a particular nerve for those who are living in a society where
the cost of living compared with income is steadily increasing, where diseases are
becoming increasingly common, and where the public is becoming increasingly disillusioned
about the reliability and trustworthiness of politicians. Poems like London are those
which can still be applied to cities today, which seem to be rapidly desensitising itself
to the marks of weakness, marks of woe which we are well accustomed to seeing on faces of
passers by today.