Metaphors In William Blake's London

The Industrial Revolution—a Rebellion Against God, Nature, and All Things Good In the poem “London”, author William Blake uses metaphors, repetition, and imagery to present what the Romantics feared during that time period. Blake was a Romantic poet who lived during the nineteenth century in England. His chief educators were his mother and the Bible. His Christian upbringing greatly influenced his art and was a continuous source of inspiration to Blake. Having claimed to have seen his first vision of a tree full of angels at age ten, Blake continued to see these visions throughout his life. The authorBlake chose to ignore eighteenth century poetry and instead preferred Elizabethan poetry and ancient ballads. He often wrote about what he

They believed that by increasing reliance on machines, humans were becoming corrupted and losing their ties to the natural world and God. Throughout the poem, the authorBlake uses metaphors to describe the corruption that Romantics during Industrial Revolution London thought they saw. As the speaker wanders through London, he sees “every blackening Church appals” (Blake 10). The blackening of the church, a symbol of purity and piety, represents how Christianity and God were corrupted through the neglect of the people. Black, a color often associated with evil and sin, took over the whiteness and saintliness of the church, showing how Romantics believed that the sin of the industrialization was taking over the previously holy churches. As the people of London turned away from God and towards machines, they lost touch with their ethics and values. Blake and other Romantics believed that London was being overrun by sin as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Blake also describes the citizens of London as being held down by “mind-forged manacles” (Blake 8). The manacles that Blake references are handcuffs that the

As the speaker observes the citizens of London walking past him, he notices “in every face [he] meet[s], “marks of weakness [and] marks of woe” (Blake ) on every face he meets. Through the sight imagery Blake uses to describe the faces of the London citizens, the audience can see the people’s exhausted expressions and lack of vigor. Their weary countenances were a testimony to how grinding life in the newly industrialized London was, a sharp contrast to how glamorous a life with supposedly less work should have been. The marks of weakness on people’s faces showed how physically draining their everyday work was, but the marks of woe truly exhibited how emotionally and mentally draining industrialized life was. The incessant, tedious work people in industrial London did wore down on both their spirits and bodies, a clear testimony to how living in harmony with nature. The Romantics believed that as people became more expendable and less unique, their individuality and will to work hard and prosper would fade, leaving them empty shells of people who just meandered to work and back, no less of a machine than the metal contraptions they worked with. Moreover, London’s despair-filled condition is further emphasized when the speaker hears the “youthful harlot’s curse… blights with plagues the marriage-hearse”(Blake 14-16). Harlots,