Oppression in Poetry - Book Report/Review Example

Suzana Zdravkovska 15 April 2009 Oppression as William Blake represents it in "London" and Other Songs of Innocence and of Experience and as T. S. Eliot Represents it in "The Waste Land" Oppression by definition means condition of being ruled by unjust or cruel government. However there are also other kinds of oppression, and no matter which kind of oppression we are talking about when it comes to poetry, it must be said that many poets in different times throughout history have written about oppression. For as long as there are unjust governments and societies there will always be poets who will express their bitter feelings about the oppression in their poetry. As a poet who belongs to the early generation of the poets of the romanticism William Blake, (1757-1827), is no exception. His poetry is characterized with his insisting on total freedom for the individual, thus expressing his rebel and revolutionary spirit. His rebellion is directed toward two things. First, he rebels against kings, tyrants, clergy, etc. His collection "Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience" consists actually of two collections, but Blake himself combined and joined them in one under the title "Songs of Innocence and of Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". In his "Songs of Innocence" Blake sees the world through the eyes of an innocent child, that is, children see only the sunshine and do not notice the dark clouds, meaning that children know only of joy, laughter and happiness. Some of the poems that deal with this subject are "The Little Boy Lost, The Little Boy Found", "The Chimney Sweeper", "A Dream", "The Divine Image", "Holy Thursday", etc. In "The Little Boy Lost, The Little Boy found" Blake describes a boy lost in the swamp, that cries all alone in the dark night, and the good God shows in his father's face and takes the boy home to his mother. In his longer poem "The Chimney Sweeper", the boy recounts to the readers how his father sold him to "chimney sweepers" and he has to work long hours and very hard. The boy is always dirty. However, one night the boy dreams of an angel that takes all of the children chimney sweepers to Heaven and awakes comforted and joyous. In "A Dream" a child dreams of a small ant that has taken the wrong road and is worried about the well-being of his children, but a glow-worm shows up and shows him the way home. In his only ideological poem in this collection "The Divine Image" Blake points out that God lives in everybody and that God and man are one and the same: "For Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love Is God, our father dear, And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is Man, his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress" However, the same title in "Songs of Experience" that is "A Divine Image" is a clear contrast to the above mentioned in "Songs of Innocence". According to "A Divine Image" in the "Songs of Experience", man is the bearer of evil passions as much as he is the bearer of virtues in the poem under the same title in "Songs of Innocence". "Cruelty has a Human Heart, And Jealousy a Human Face; Terror the Human Form divine, And Secrecy the Human Dress." Here we can understand "jealousy" as "envy" and this personification has its origin in the Old Testament idea about the "jealous God" who envies its creatures, that God to Blake is the devil himself, or the principle of evil. We can also compare another poem under the same name in the two collections and that is "Holy Thursday". While in "Songs of Innocence" this poem presents the Christian message of Charity to those in need, to the poor through the characters of children on a holiday procession lead by distinguished elders, and the children are happy, dressed in clothes of vivid colors, their song reaches the sky, and the elders are all wise, good, dignified, in "Songs of Experience" it has no similarity to the first one, that is, it is totally different and it presents a severe protest against oppression, misery of children, etc, expressed through very simple words, though very sharp ones: "Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand Is that trembling cry a song Can it be a song of joy And so many children poor It is a land of poverty!" Through all these verses Blake protests against thousands of children being treated as slaves in factories and mills, with no fixed work hours, no legal protection. Finally, maybe one of the most successfully written poems of Blake from "Songs of Experience" that expresses his attitude towards oppression, as well as it is a social satire is the poem "London". The first stanza of this poem is worth quoting: "I wander thro' each chartered street, Near where the chartered Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe." The word "chartered", actually, the epithet "chartered" means limited and bound by law and rules. Speaking of Thames the meaning is double: concrete and figurative. Thames is chartered both between its banks and chained by the rules and inhibitions. This poem symbolically describes the darkest and the most oppressing society. Furthermore in the third and fourth stanza Blake describes the three types of social extortion and moral enslaving through the characters of the little chimney sweeper in the black church, the soldier in front of the palace and the young prostitutes. London is presented as a frightful picture of the Hell of the modern capitalist city. As much as Blake's poetry is easy to understand, T.S. Elliot's is very difficult to understand especially if one has no knowledge of Latin, German and French, which is apparent in his poem "The Waste Land". "The Waste Land" marks the third phase of Elliot's opus. This work of Eliot has become a symbol of the disappointed generation of British and American intellectuals by the war and it speaks of Elliot's view of modern civilizations. The first part of this work titled as The Burial of the Dead is a kind of a review of all the motives and moods as a whole and maybe just because of that is the most exploited in every school. The first seven verses beginning "April is the cruelest month" speak of the coming of the spring but in a totally unusual way, because everyone is used to understanding spring as something beautiful and not cruel. Then Elliot writes about some woman's memories of sledging in her childhood with some banal and snobbish remarks, to suddenly continue in a very solemn-passionate way to as the "son of man": "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish This is obviously his comment about the emptiness and void of the high society described previously. After that there is a part that describes some desolate mountain region that symbolizes the common spiritual wasteland of the modern world and society. It is very important according to Elliot for the man to fear the wasteland of the present that may urge him to a rebirth. In the next stanza the poet's nostalgia for home is obvious. Elliot thinks it is very important for everybody to unite with space and with himself. The only way a man can find salvation from this draught of the modern life is in finding real love. It is also a kind of a myth because Elliot writes also about bringing life to earth by death and resurrection. The last part of the first singing "Unreal City!..." is very powerful is actually the part that reveals the life of the working people walking down the London Bridge "under the brown fog of a winter dawn". This is also a part that includes the symbolism of death in life and life in death, i.e. salvation. There are many verses in "The Waste Land" written either in Greek, or Latin, or German, even French. That's why it is very difficult to understand as it is also because of his philosophical approach many readers are not acquainted very well with. However, oppressed sexuality, oppressed working class, snobbism and alike in the higher classes, all of them point to his rebellious nature. This side of Elliot's character could be seen maybe even more clearly in his "The Hollow Man", 1925, but to go into some deeper analysis of both the rest of the cantos of "The Waste Land" and of "The Hollow Man" would take very long. Besides, let's allow scholars think of his philosophical approach to poetry and what is left to us is read his poetry only to stir some emotions. MLA formatted: The Purdue OWL. 26 Aug. 2008. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. 23 April 2008 . Sources: 1."The Norton Anthology of American Literature", fourth edition, vol.2, ISBN 0-393-96462-0, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, p.1270-1282 Read More