Analysis of social conflict in William Blake's "The chimney  Sweeper" poems

This paper focuses a poem entitled "The Chimney Sweeper" by using sociological approach to the conflict. This paper examines the present conflict on children in an environment that is in the poem "The Chimney Sweeper". Underlying philosophy sociological approach is the intrinsic relationship between literature and the community.

Term conflict confligo comes from the Latin, meaning collide, knock, clash, fight, or argue [K. Prent, et al., 1969:174). Social conflict by Leopold von Wiese is a social process in which individuals or groups of people trying to fulfill what the goals with the other parties oppose accompanied by threats and violence [Sociology XI, 42-2007].

The William Blake poem entitled "The Chimney Sweeper" tells the story about a small boy who was sold into the chimney-sweeping business when his mother died. He recounts the story of a fellow chimney sweeper, Tom Dacre, who cried when his hair was shaved to prevent vermin and soot from infesting it. The speaker comforts Tom, who falls asleep and has a dream or vision of several chimney sweepers all locked in black coffins. An angel arrives with a special key that opens the locks on the coffins and sets the children free. The newly freed children run through a green field and wash themselves in a river, coming out clean and white in the bright sun. The angel tells Tom that if he is a good boy, he will have this paradise for his own. When Tom awakens, he and the speaker gather their tools and head out to work, somewhat comforted that their lives will one day improve.

Social conflict is a daily reality that we often encounter, there is no life without conflict. Georg Simmel in this case stated that the conflict will not disappear from the stage of public life. As practiced by William Blake in the poem "The Chimney Sweeper" here can be seen that there are children who protest living conditions, working conditions, and the overall treatment of young chimney sweep in British cities. It would make a lot of people, including Blake, realizing that life will live a chimney sweep. For example, they sleep in the basement in the pockets of soot that they had swept, and they lack food and clothing. They will sweep chimneys naked so that their masters will not have to replace clothing that will be destroyed in the chimney, and they rarely bathe. Those who were not killed by the fire in the chimney usually die early remains of one respiratory problems or cancer of the scrotum.

Social conflict theory is always about power and politics, in this case there are always people who have power and who does not. There is a hint of criticism here in Tom Dacre's dream and in the boys' subsequent actions, however. Blake decries the use of promised future happiness as a way of subduing the oppressed. The boys carry on with their terrible, probably fatal work because of their hope in a future where their circumstances will be set right. This same promise was often used by those in power to maintain the status quo so that workers and the weak would not unite to stand against the inhuman conditions forced upon them. What on the surface appears to be a condescending moral to lazy boys is in fact a sharp criticism of a culture that would perpetuate the inhuman conditions of chimney sweeping on children. Tom Dacre (whose name may derive from “Tom Dark,” reflecting the sooty countenance of most chimney sweeps) is comforted by the promise of a future outside the “coffin” that is his life’s lot. Clearly, his present state is terrible and only made bearable by the two-edged hope of a happy afterlife following a quick death.

Blake here critiques not just the deplorable conditions of the children sold into chimney sweeping, but also the society, and particularly its religious aspect, that would offer these children palliatives rather than aid. That the speaker and Tom Dacre get up from the vision to head back into their dangerous drudgery suggests that these children cannot help themselves, so it is left to responsible, sensitive adults to do something for them.

Therefore in the process of social conflict that the inequality in a society. As it is written in the poem "The Chimney Sweeper" here illustrates William Blake's view that neither naive innocence nor bitter experience is completely accurate. There is a higher state of understanding that includes both innocence and experience. Both are need to complete one another to form the more accurate view. In this case, it is an expression on the poet's view of the political issue dealing with chimney sweeps that dominates both poems. Although the viewpoints of each poem are different, both show plight of the majority of the chimney sweepers in the cities of England, and while one endorses hope and the other bitterness, the reader must acknowledge that something needs to be done to improve life for these children.

And some messages from William Blake to readers is a Using techniques such as diction, religious allusions, closure, concrete images and imagery, Blake sets the heartbreaking mood of the chimney sweepers. And this poem William Blake can give some messages with William Blake’s response to the condition of the children who cleaned these dark, polluted, dingy and smelly chimneys are sympathetic and poignant. In both his poems titled The Chimney Sweeper, Blake expounds on the horrible conditions these children experience, one that eventually leads to death. Blake writes that death is in fact the only solace poor children who swept chimneys had.

From here we can conclude that William Blake wanted to give a message to readers that the understanding of a society that uses social approach to the conflict on children. And it also proves that literature has the relationship between literature, society, community, and even in terms of the conflicts we are able to understand from each other.