Speaker's Worldview William Blake's Worldview Essay

The child's presentation of his naive question that is asked without any expectation of an answer conveys an innocence over the entire poem.

In the second stanza, however, the imagery is not quite so clear, and the images become more analogy than picture, but the analogy represents innocence and purity. In the child's answer about who made the Lamb, the child describes the creator as both a child and a Lamb. Commonly, children are thought of as innocent and pure, as are lambs (the children of sheep, if you will) considered harmless and docile. In Christianity, Jesus often refers to a child-like state or a child-like mind as the most innocent and teachable mindset to have. Also in Christianity, lambs are considered innocent and blameless, at times in need of love and guidance. Indeed, the child in the poem explains it best when he says that the Lamb's creator "became a little child" (16) and "calls himself a Lamb" (14). In Christianity, the creator God and his son Jesus are considered to be one in the same person, God in divine form and Jesus in human form. When Jesus (also the creator, God), came to Earth as a man, he sacrificed ease and comfort for pain and ridicule. In the end, he paid the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. In the times of Jesus, animals were offered as sacrifices to God, and it is because of Jesus' sacrifice that he is referred to also in the Bible as the Lamb of God. He came to Earth as a child, and departed in the same way that many lambs had. The reason animals were used in sacrifices, and the reason Jesus sacrificed himself is because only a pure and blameless spirit could atone for the filthiness of sin.Therefore, Jesus is the ultimate symbol of innocence. The child also describes the Lamb's creator as "meek" and "mild" (15) still more words that complete the idea of purity, innocence, and blamelessness.

It would seem as though, despite the corruption of the church that William Blake criticized in his compilation Songs of Experience, he still was able to find redeeming qualities in an individual's personal religious beliefs which he commented on in "The Lamb." The peace and tranquility conveyed in the first stanza, and the running theme of innocence throughout, which is strengthened in the final stanza, shows that Blake's opinion of the fundamental principles of Christianity is a positive one. This positivity that Blake associates with his poetic subject is evident not only by the poetic techniques he uses, including short line length, rhyme, and bouncy meter, but also by the intense pictorial and representative imagery that he uses throughout. The child's rhetorical question-and-answering game with the Lamb shows a certain playful affection for the Lamb, mirrored by the representation of the creator as a lamb, whose greatest demonstration of affection was in his final sacrifice.

Works Cited

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