Is The Criticism Of Organized Religion In William Blake's Little Boy Found?

The most leading literary device used in Blake’s poems is symbolism. In this particular poem, “The Lamb” is a reference to God himself. This is because of the trinity that is involved with being a Christ follower. The trinity is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The child in the poem, is a symbol as innocence and purity just like Jesus Christ. Christians are to “receive the kingdom of God like a child” (Luke 18:17, ESV). This means that we are to have child-like faith, and trust in God, just like children do in their parents.

Just like the “lamb” that was born into this world through a virgin and was sacrificed for all mankind, this same “lamb” made us and called us by his name. In his poem "The Lamb," William Blake clearly uses repetition, personification, and symbolism to describe his religious beliefs and how a pure sacrifice is portrayed by a little lamb. Laura Quinney’s book, “William Blake on Self and Soul,” shows the religious side of Blake when it says, “Blake makes this argument in his address “To the Deists,” where he insists “Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan” (Quinney, 2009). Blake uses his religious view to show us he believes that our creator is the Lamb of God. He distinctively uses the innocence and purity of a little lamb and how its creator clearly takes care of it. The lamb is fed, given water by the stream and a bidden a blessed life.

The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of

Blake wanted people to read this poem and understand his concept of questioning God, for how could God make something so innocent and pure as the Lamb and then in turn make something so evil? The situation is very similar to the

Although both men are both devout Christians, they have different views. For instance, William Blake wrote his poems in order to teach children the necessity of being in church and accepting Christ as a personal savior. Many of his poems stress how important it is to know God and how their faith can save them from their worries. An example of this is in the poem "The Chimney Sweeper" when the little boy had a dream about an angel setting free men that were trapped in a black coffin. Throughout his poetry, Blake uses many nouns to indicate the biblical meaning of something. For instance, in the poem "The Lamb", he uses the lamb as a metaphor for Jesus Christ to show that he too was a humble lamb. This metaphor showed that Jesus is close to us humans by using the word lamb to describe both children and Jesus Christ. However, in Wordsworth's poems, the topic of religion is seen through a more naturalistic view. In other words, William Wordsworth viewed that in order for religion to be truly appreciated it must be in nature where God truly is. This view is seen in his poem "We are Seven". The setting of the poem takes place outside of a churchyard in which the narrator and a little cottage girl are discussing her family members. Wordsworth did not use his poetry to show the importance of going to church or being a Christian like Blake did, however, he did use children to show that they are the ones closest to God. In Wordsworth's poetry, the child is what is able to be free in nature, and since nature is where God is that meant that the child was the closest to God. Not only were children used to show the importance of religion to Wordsworth but is also shown through the capitalization of some of the words throughout his poems. Words such as Boy, Girl, and Creature were all capitalized to show that God created all things, and these nouns were capitalized to show that God was

Both Gerald Manley Hopkins and William Blake explore the conflicts between one’s opinions and the faith which they devoutly believe. The poems The Garden of Love and Hopkins’ Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord each show the persona doubting the philosophical qualms of life surrounding Catholicism and whether spending “life upon thy cause,” is meaningful. As a child, Blake read the Bible to enhance his reading skills, however developed views correlating to the Swedenborgian church which holds the Catholic church’s views without the institutionalised feeling which Blake despised of in Catholicism. The Garden of Love intertwines his beliefs into the poetry, as depicted with the strong imagery between the vibrant childhood memory of the surroundings in comparison to the older man’s views. However,

Through this, Blake is showing the hypocrisy of religion, a theme commonly shown throughout “Experience.” Throughout “Innocence” a simple, child-like portrayal of religion is explored. This could show Blake as primarily a religious poet as there are common, simple themes running throughout many of his poems in “Innocence.” This simple view of both Christ and religion contrasts the complex metaphors used to represent religion in “Innocence.”

William Blake was a painter, engraver and poet of the Romantic era, who lived and worked in London. Many of Blake’s famous poems reside in his published collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This collection portrays the two different states of the human soul, good and evil. Many poems in the Songs of Innocence have a counterpart poem in the Songs of Experience. The poem “A Poison Tree” is found in the Songs of Experience and it delves into the mind of man tainted with sin and corruption that comes with experience. In a simple and creative style, the religious theology of the Fall of Man is brought to life. The poem tells the story of how man fell from a state of innocence to impurity, focusing on the harmful repercussions of suppressed anger. Blake utilities many literary devices to successfully characterizes anger as an antagonist with taunting power.

In "The Little Boy Lost," from Songs of Innocence, Blake presents a young child, representing the innocent mind, getting lost in the dark forest. The illustration at the top of the page shows the little boy being led by a light or spirit of some kind, the "vapour" that Blake makes reference to. The boy cries out to his "father," a metaphorically religious father, but the priest is moving too fast for the boy and leaves him behind to wander through the world alone.

Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and

Blake rejects empirical reason. He will have no part of the prevailing social and religious conventions, or even the so-called virtuous characteristics of humankind. “I must create my own system or be enslav’d by another man’s” (Blake 208). This is what he did. Blake designed a method of “illuminate printing” to render his undeniably religious artistic vision to accompany his lyrical and satirical poems.

Blake uses traditional symbols of angels and devils, animal imagery, and especially images of fire and flame to: 1) set up a dual world, a confrontation of opposites or "contraries" which illustrate how the rules of Reason and Religion repress and pervert the basic creative energy of humanity, 2) argues for apocalyptic transformation of the self "through the radical regeneration of each person's own power to imagine" (Johnson/Grant, xxiv), and 3) reconstructs Man in a new image, a fully realized Man who is both rational and imaginative, partaking of his divinity through creativity. The form of the poem consists of "The Argument," expositions on his concepts of the "contraries" and of "expanded perception" which are both interspersed with "Memorable Fancies" that explicate and enlarge on his expositions, and concludes with "A Song of Liberty," a prophecy of a future heaven on earth.

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are collections of poems that utilize the imagery, instruction, and lives of children to make a larger social commentary. The use of child-centered themes in the two books allowed Blake to make a crucial commentary on his political and moral surroundings with deceptively simplistic and readable poetry. Utilizing these themes Blake criticized the church, attacking the hypocritical clergy and pointing out the ironies and cruelties found within the doctrines of organized religion. He wrote about the horrific working conditions of children as a means to magnify the inequality between the poor working class and

The preacher is as dry as a desert, and the lessons of the gospels are spouted out to an unenthused distant audience. The child in this poem (though told by the bard) shares a close connection (as Blake believed all children did) with God that has not yet been clouded by the harshness of life. Therefore, he can make such observances and offer his advice. Children share a connection with God that is innocent and fair, this theme is made apparent in mostly all of Blake's poems. Consequently, God is still a loving father to this child (as stated in lines xiii - xiv), and not the vengeful God that the preacher most likely is painting him to be. This poem is used by Blake as a way to communicate his belief that the church was suffering from cold militant preaching rather than warm intoxicating

To understand what is being said in such poems as "THE GARDEN OF LOVE" and "The Little Vagabond" one must consider the poet's religious, or shall I say spiritual, position. William Blake considered himself to be a monistic Gnostic. That is, he believed what saved a person's soul was not faith but knowledge. Faith, he felt, was a term that was abused by those who thought spending every Sunday in a church would grant them eternal salvation regardless of what actions they exhibited outside the walls of the church. Church ceremonies were also dry, emotionless and meaningless, according to Blake. Church was evil, as Blake would have put it.