Concetti Chiave
- Both William Blake and Charles Dickens explored the theme of childhood, highlighting societal issues affecting children.
- Dickens, a Victorian writer, criticized the exploitation of children and the materialistic society through his works like Oliver Twist and Hard Times.
- In Oliver Twist, Dickens portrays the workhouse as a symbol of hypocrisy, emphasizing the plight of the vulnerable without offering concrete solutions.
- William Blake, a romantic poet, also condemned child exploitation and societal hypocrisy, using direct and explicit criticism in poems like "The Chimney Sweeper."
- Blake's approach contrasts with Dickens' more exaggerated and sometimes unreliable narrative style, as Blake provides clear warnings and direct denunciations.
Both William Blake and Charles Dickens analyzed the theme of childhood.
Dickens
Dickens embodies the Victorian Age,he is a philanthropic and revolutionary writer.
Dickens is the most Victorian writer because he totally shares Victorian values as the importance given to appearance than the one given to effective reality.
He supports the weakest of society and he denounces the exploitation of children and the materialistic society, not in order to induce revolution but to get the common intelligence of the country to alleviate undeniable sufferings.
In Oliver Twist he describes the workhouse(symbol of hypocrisy) where Oliver works: he doesn't leave any solution and sometimes he isn't reliable because of his lots of grotesque description and exaggeration.
In Hard times he describes an imaginary city, Coketown, based on: industrialization,pollution and alienation where everything is seen by a materialistic and useful point of view ("nothing but facts").
William Blake
The romantic poet W. Blake paid attention to social problems and sympathized for the victims of society in particular children. He denounces children exploitation and criticizes people who ignore social problems and the hypocrisy of institutions that had forgotten their primary role that is to take care of the victims of society.
In “chimney sweeper” he compare children to lambs that are the symbol of sacrifice, innocence, tenderness while in Holy Thursday he describes the parade as a symbol of hypocrisies.
Even Dickens criticized the social evils of industrialized society. Children are often the most important characters in Dickens’s novels, they have an important didactic aim by making them the moral teachers(as in Oliver Twist).Instead of Dickens, Blake denounces such problems in a more direct and explicit way(using sort of warnings) while Dickens doesn't leave any solution and seems to be more superficial because of his exaggerated descriptions.
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