1 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2021
    1. My first impression of the image was that it was very dark. It appears to have been drawn using a medium such as charcoal, which gave the picture a smudged, almost hazy, look. Saying the title is "The Chimney Sweeper", this makes sense. The figure in the drawing is dark, as if they were covered with soot. We see them trudging through the snow and, though we can't see much expression on their face, their posture combined with the scene around them helps viewers feel their misery. Annotations:

      • Is a "little black thing" supposed to represent the narrator/the chimney sweep?
      • "Crying weep, weep" is repetition
      • While the child was sent to work, their parents have gone to pray at church
      • When defining heath, i found the common definition is "an area of open uncultivated land characteristic vegetation". This doesn't seem right though to the context of the poem. Why was the narrator standing on a lush piece of land when it was winter? I feel like hearth sounds much more realistic because a hearth is the floor of a fireplace or oven.
      • In the second stanza, it seems like the adults are taking the child's' natural innocence and happy demeanor that most children have as a sign that they like sweeping chimneys in the dead of winter.
      • In the final two lines, it's clear that the speaker views royalty and even god with disdain. While children have to risk their lives just to support their families, the upper class citizens brag that their country is amazing and beautiful. They brag about this while consciously ignoring the impoverished families that make up the majority of their citizens.