Blake is the enemy of all authority(TM) Essay

Blakes poetry often serves to dish out his anti-authoritarian views and loathing of institutional power. Further more(prenominal), his views often impress upon the reviewer his belief in the mankind right for two spiritual and social freedom, unconstrained by completed convention. Blakes treatment of the institution of the church and holiness is often contemptuous and shows his attitude to what he sees as the hypocrisy of an uncompromi prate establishment which in his look causes misery, rather than nurturing the human sole.In The Garden of come Blake begins his anti-clerical message in the stanza the furnish of this chapel were close up and reflects his view of the church as exclusionary. Moreover, the shut gates imply that the path to heaven and God does non start at the foot of the alter, but in individual belief and spirituality. The idea is further construct in the poem by the image of priests book binding with briars my joys and desires and thereby placing the pri ests in the po hinge uponion of Christs oppressors, making them seem malevolent in robbing sight of their native joyful impulse.The alliteration and assonance inwardly the binding with briars further reinforces the idea of a savage path to supposed salvation. The Marriage of Heaven and pit challenges traditional Christian theology and makes the statement that Prisons atomic number 18 built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion, this conveys his belief that whilst society whitethorn restrain im honourableity, religion can create it. The prisons built with stones of law also symbolise how traditional domineering pedagogy has imprisoned personal individuality.Furthermore devout is the passive which obeys drive. Evil is the scrapive springing from get-up-and-go epitomises the reading of the Church of Blakes prison term and is contrary to the sentiments of most(prenominal) contemporary readers in an age prizing individuality and condemnatory of passive indol ence. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was dispassionate after the 1789 French Revolution and in a period of radical ideological and political conflict, wherefore Blakes condemnation of apathy is aimed to promulgate his heap of anarchic postal code free from the restrain of representation. cause is the bound or outward circumference of energy suggests that vivacious purely through ones intellect is what constrains boundless energy, which to him is eternal delight. So in this respect it is evident that the traditional liberty given to rationality is seen as preventative to living life to its full as the restrainer or reason governs the unwilling. This indicates Blakes view that the innate(p) human instinct is to oppose reason and that to act according to reason is tantamount to acting nether duress, in the mistaken belief that to oppose reason is to go against the Good which is the passive that obeys reason.In the poem The school Boy Blake condemns school- an institution which tries to teach reason as restricting the electric s exhaustrs vivacity in his natural surround. How can the bird that is born for joy sit in a cage and sing? is a metaphor for human imprisonment to show that the environment of the classroom cannot cultivate the unrestrained and joyful energy which Blake reveres. This is in pedigree to the sky-lark which sings with the boy when he rises in a summer morn When the birds sing on every tree. This illustrates the bucolic setting, filled with aural imagery and how joy prevails in the boundless border of nature.The repression of man-created institutions such as school can be contrasted to the freedom provided by nature, where arguably God is the that ascendance. The obliges vocal music centres on the liberating environment of nature where the voices of nipperren be comprehend on the green and laughing is heard on the hill. This evokes the abundance of delight created by Gods creation of the natural beingness and how in Blakes t ime the idyllic countryside of England was hitherto largely unspoiled by large, polluting manufacturers seeking advance maximisation.The laughing of the children in The treasures telephone call almost becomes as natural as the song of the little birds and shows that in such pastoral environment the childrens freedom is boundless just as that of the birds. However, this freedom is circumscribed by the watchful nurse in The Nurses Song in Songs of Experience who reprimands the children saying your spring and your day argon wasted in play and in contrast to the well intentioned protection of the children in the first Nurses Song, this poem presages the eventual acquittance of the childrens natural freedom.However, Blake does not oppose enatic authority arising from love, that is in the best interests of the child. Whilst he may rightfully condemn the parents in The Chimney sweeper (experience) who clothed their child in the clothes of death And taught him to sing the notes of woe, this is because they are uncaring and hostile to their childs happiness that is anathema to them. Consequently, their authority is annihilating and oppressive. But, Blake does not condemn the guiding role of the find in The Little Black Boy, who taughthim underneath a tree, as her teaching is not institutionalised and rigidly doctrinal, but done out-of-doors in the natural environment that Blake so venerates. Moreover, at a time when slavery was still juristic in England and the general perception of other races was of a racist sort, Blakes portrayal of the boy and his beat in an affectionate manner, devoid of savagery would have challenged the notions of his day. In another radical step onward from the customs of his time the introduction to Songs of Innocence gives authority to the child, to which the piper assents. Pipe a song roughly a lamb./ So I piped with merry quicken paints the child was the origin of creativity and beautiful, with the piper as his instrument. The reference to the lamb suggests that the child has a moral and spiritual purpose and that his youthful innocence makes him more adept than the piper to whom he shoes how to convey the message through song. However the transience of the childs authority is conveyed in the words so he vanished from my sight which re-establishes the reality of Blakes time when children were powerless to resist the demands of their elders and could not dictate their proclaim wishes or destinies.Blakes focus on authority is intended to make a social and political statement about the customs of his day. Arguably, he does not oppose all authority but exactly the kind arising from self-interest and requiring the sacrifice of fellow human beings. His poetry advocates individuality and unrestrained vivacity for life high-flown for his time and fundamentally preaches unbridled equality.