1. EXPERIENCE SWEEP
Tuesday, 04 December 2018

2. LOOKING FOR CLUES…
Can you find clues from the language of the poem to support the view that:
Blake is attacking the social system of the day.
Blake is angry that parents are ignoring their responsibilities
Blake thinks that religious observance is some form of hypocrisy
Blake thinks that society is unable to see the reality of the children’s position
Blake, the revolutionary, believes that the King has made himself more important than God. He does not like this.
Each clue will be a quotation. You need to explain each clue you find…

3. FIRST:
Experience poems are generally answers or response to innocence.
This poem seems to show a young boy who, unlike Tom Dacre, has recognised his position.
It also reflects the context or political background to the poem.

4. SO: L1 An immediate symbolic use of the black/white contrast.
But if white is “good” or “heavenly” what is the effect of the snow?
The contrast continues in L6/7 where the snow is linked with “clothes of woe”.

5. PARENTS?
There is a responsibility on all parents to care for children. Here they are failing. Why?
Does the church blind them to what is going on? Are they hypocrites if they pray whilst letting their children suffer?
They misunderstand in the last stanza. A smiling child is NOT necessarily happy…
What is the effect of L 10? What is Blake intending our response to be?

6. RELIGION
Church seems to allow parents to hide from their actions in Stanza 1.
The parents are superficially comforted in Stanza 3 and go to church… What is the significance of the word order of L11?
Is HEAVEN really based on the “misery” of the children? Or is this because of the perversion of the order of the trinity in L11?

7. REVOLUTION
In 1789, Blake watched the French Revolution, thrilled. By 1794 it had degenerated into slaughter and the politics of envy.
How might this link to the idea expressed in Stanza 2? The child seems to think that his happiness was the direct cause of his current misery.
God, Priest, King is a reversal of order. They formed the major objects of hate during the revolution. What is the impression given here of the relative importance of this group? How might that link to the theme of Experience?