Difficulty to resist/ complicity in suffering

• The Voice of the Ancient Bard - 'folly is an endless maze' 'How many have fallen there' 


  • human foolishness is trapping us in a fallen world
  • many of us have been destroyed by folly/ darkness
  • ultimately the voice of the bard warns of the dangers but does suggest that they can overcome these obstacles - it is possible but they have a long way to go to free themselves
• Introduction (E) - 'Calling the lapsed soul' 



  • refers to Adam & Eve, & therefore by extension all of humanity
  • humanity is now lapsed with shame & this overriding shame leaves us in a constant state of atonement & passivity needing to please god
• Introduction (E) - 'Turn away no more;/ Why wilt thou turn away' 


  • we are turning away & becoming complicit in out own oppression
  • we have opportunity to fight shame but we are not taking it
  • we have internalised shame, fear & guilt imposed by authority that now we police ourselves
  • humanity is paralysed by the systems it has come to accept as natural
• Earth's Answer - 'Earth raised up her head/ From darkness dread and drear' 


  • earth portrayed as a victim, emerging from state of darkness & repression - reflects the idea Newton's sleep & Blake's criticism , representing how humanity is kept in a state of fear and ignorance
  • trapped in single vision - human spirit has ability to experience world in plethora of ways experiencing all instincts & desires - but this is repressed & used as a means of control by institutions who have humanity in a state of shame/ compliance
• Earth's Answer - 'Prison'd on watery shore' 'chained in night' 


  • repeated symbols of confinement & imprisonment show how institutions trap human potential
• Earth's Answer - 'Starry jealousy does keep my den' 'Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!'


  • Earth blames Old Testament God 'Urizen' for this repression
  • Urizen was jealous of humanity & therefore used punishment as a form of control to spite them
  • church uses fear as a tool to ensure conformity & passivity, keeping the institution in power whilst humanity is oppressed & prevented from indulging in its instincts
• Earth's Answer - 'Break this heavy chain' 


  • earth pleads for liberation, calling on humanity to take responsibility for its own freedom
  • currently humanity has internalised its own oppression
  • people are trapped & complicit, unable to see beyond the system that controls them
  • Blake highlights that those in power will not free the oppressed, liberation must come from within
  • humanity has capacity for revolution, but feels powerless because it has lost touch with imagination, desire & emotional truth
  • revolution possible but requires a radical reawakening, reclaiming spiritual & emotional wholeness, & breaking free from ideological chains that bind us
• Sunflower - ‘Where the youth pined away with desire’ 

  • Captures painful, endless yearning of the soul for fulfillment - especially sexual or emotional 
  • Poems incomplete syntax reflects this unending cycle , reinforcing that humans endlessly strive (like the sunflower ‘counting the steps of the sun’ but never reach satisfaction - just like humans dedicate lives toreachings heaven, yet remained burdened by the idea of original sin 
  • Through the virgin, Blake critiques how institutions repress sexuality, particularly female
  • Snow symbolises coldness & material world that encourages such repression & the ‘shroud’ suggests that this denial leads not to purity but to emotional decay & spiritual lifelessness 
  • Life-affirming desire is twisted into shame, creating a cycle of yearning without release
• London - 'Mind-forged manacles' 


  • mind is a creative entity with huge capacity yet we have used it to create our own handcuffs (link to earth's answer 'heavy chain')
  • internalised oppression which breeds complicity & passivity
  • we have surrendered to self-imposed restrictions - accept them as natural
  • we fail to question these restrictions and therefore remain trapped - we need to acknowledge these mind-forged barriers can we begin to reclaim our agency and challenge the structures that confine us
• London - 'chartered streets' 'black'ning church appals' 


  • London place of systemic control, corruption & human suffering,
  • city is mapped, owned & controlled - every aspect of life, including human freedom & nature is regulated by oppressive institutions like state & church
  • church is morally darkened - turns blind eye to suffering of poor rather than offering hope
  • Blake exposes dark underside of city which is symbolic of status quo, corruption, injustice, need for control - control so entrenched that it is normalised & there is no visible escape - suffering not just individual but structural, embedded in very fabric of city
• The Human Abstract - 'Pity would be no more/ If we did not make somebody poor' 


  • virtues as tools of control
  • virtues like pity & mercy only exist in a corrupt society
  • the church depends on suffering to maintain power
  • if humanity were to recapture ethos of eden, church's authority would collapse - therefore to preserve its status church must ensure people remain in constant state of distress, poverty & discomfort
  • instead of addressing their own suffering, individuals are encouraged to show compassion for others - a virtue that only exists because suffering exists
  • in this way, the Church must continually perpetuate suffering, as without it, its moral framework & control mechanisms would fall apart
• The Human Abstract 'It bears the fruit of Deceit' 


  • reflects how church & state is aware of what they're doing when they reinforce teachings
  • (link to exploitation of institutions)
• The Human Abstract - 'And the raven his nest has made/ In its thickest shade'


  • raven symbolises death
  • as 'shade' of oppression deepens & reaches its 'thickest' it reflects how far we've progressed into ignorance & submission
  • by allowing system to grow unchecked, we have allowed oppression to happen & now we cannot see a way out
  • this leads to a kind of living death were we deny ourselves the full range of human experience - in this state we are no longer truly alive, merely existing in control
• The Human Abstract - internalised oppression (final stanza)

  • the 'gods' search 'through nature' for ways to dominate us but ultimately the real trap is within ourselves: 'There grows one in the human brain'
  • clear expression of 'mind-forged manacles' - we have absorbed the values & fears imposed by power structures so deeply that we police ourselves, making external control almost unnecessary
  • internalisation makes oppression more insidious & far harder to resist, as the source of control now lies within - sense that humanity cannot come back from this
• A Little Boy Lost - 'burned in a holy place' 'Where many had been burned before' 


  • irony - church twists its sacred role into an instrument of punishment
  • it is not an isolated incident - reflects wider, system persecution of anyone who deviates from orthodoxy
  • chilling inevitability & normalisation of persecution - horror becomes almost ritualised, disguised as a form of justice or religious duty
  • public rendered powerless, either complicit through silence or crushed by fear
  • in a society ruled by restrictive authority, innocence and dissent are doomed to be destroyed again and again
• A Little Boy Lost - 'The weeping child could not be heard/ The weeping parents wept in vain'

  • highlights complete powerlessness of child & parents in face of institutional authority
  • Childs voice silenced - innocence & reason are dismissed by church
  • parents unable to protect son or challenge church's actions
  • even those who love & acre deeply are helpless against the overwhelming force of religious authority - power overrides compassion & justice