The Gothic era produced many works of literature that deal with dark circumstances that cannot easily be explained. Many works, including Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, are unanimously accepted as gothic, but that is not the case for all gothic literature. William Blake is well-known as a Romantic poet; however, that is not the case for both of his poems entitled “The Chimney Sweeper.” These poems reflect many elements that are gothic, including a gloomy setting, supernatural beings, and intense emotions. These elements argue that William Blake was not solely a Romantic poet. In “The Chimney Sweeper[s],” both settings begin gloomy. The first poem begins with “when my mother died I was very young and my father sold me,” (1-2) while the second begins out as “little black thing among the snow crying ‘’weep,’ ’weep,’ ’weep,’ in notes of woe” (1-2). These settings portray a feeling of …show more content…
These emotions are caused by a combination of connotation and rhythm. The connotations in both poems create a sense of fear and sadness. In the first “Chimney Sweeper,” the phrases that create these emotions are “when my mother died,” (1) “coffins of black,” (12) and “Angel...set them all free” (13-14). Anyone who has experienced death knows that these words create an intense feeling of grief. Within the second “Chimney Sweeper,” the author portrays fear when he writes “they clothed me in clothes of death, and taught me to sing the notes of woe” (7-8). This may not seem to be frightening until one takes it apart and examines the deeper meaning of the words. “Clothes of death” refers to what people are buried in while “notes of woe” refers to the tears that are present at funerals. The first person point-of-view leaves readers with a sense of fear because they can imagine themselves laying lifeless in coffins after reading these