London William Blake Analysis

"London", by William Blake uncovers a city overwhelmed by neediness and hardship. Blake overshadows London’s elegant appeal and replaces it with his own twist of the corrupted city. London is nothing more than a city with a shortage of money due to harsh economic times. Those in power have weakened the moral of the while city so that poverty exists in the lower classes. Blake uses three distinct metaphors: “Marriage hearse,” “black’ning Church,” and “mind-forged manacles” to express that the city suffers from social tyranny, physical and psychological confinement, and widespread suffering and despair society. To completely acknowledge “London” the reader must first understand the historical context during this time period. William Blake's

The utilization of the words 'wander', 'charter'd' and 'mark' all add to the solemnity climate with the long, drawn out, 'A' sound conjuring up a feeling of torpidity, inciting the pursuer to nearly envision the man's 'cry' of sadness. The first use of charter’d refers to the criticism of the properties around the speaker that are privately owned. The repetition of charter’d then talks about the charter’s Thames, meaning the river Thames, we’re seeing an interesting image of the forcing of human power and control onto something natural like a river. The reader sees a contrast between the power of nature and the power of man. Man seeks to try to charter to control and organize everything, even something as uncontrollable and natural as the river Thames. This second use of the word charter’d can be seen as a satirical attack of the obsession with property rights and as an extension of that human power and control. The irony pointed out by Blake is that a river cannot really be controlled by the passing of a law. One of the courses of suffering is the misuse of power through the charting of each charter’d street and the charted terms. This allowed the rich to become richer and the poor to be more heavily controlled by the government, which widened the gap between the powerless and those in power. Moreover, the repetition of the word, 'mark' is especially exasperating as it underlines how the general population are always marked with obvious indications of wretchedness and 'woe'. The way the word shifts from the verb arrangement to the noun in line 4 can likewise remain to accentuate how the storyteller is not only an aloof onlooker but is also going about as one of the sufferers himself, quickly influencing the poem to appear to be more individual. The repetitions represent the incapable repetitive suffering of those in the poem. The