The Destruction of Childhood Innocence in Blake's poetry and Satrapi's Persepolis
Draft script prepared for IB SL English Coursework (individual oral on a chosen global issue in one work and one text studied), 10 minute oral exam + 5 minute teacher questions
Script
NB: this “script” was not available during the oral exam; written in preparation only.
Introduction (1 minute)
Identify global issue, and how you have refined it in light of your two works to a narrow focus.
Give a brief overview of the works (including genre) and place your passages briefly in their context
Outline how the global issue is important in each passage
The global issue I will be addressing is the destruction of childhood innocence in William Blake’s poetry and in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. In particular, I will consider this theme with respect to The Chimney Sweeper from Blake’s ‘Songs of Experience’ collection; and with respect to these pages [gesture] from the chapter ‘The Key’ in Persepolis.
Persepolis is a memoir in the form of a graphic novel that details the effect of the rise of the oppressive Islamic Republic in Iran on Satrapi’s childhood. It shows how malleable children can be – ideologically and behaviourally – during war, since they cannot understand the situation. In The Key, we see how many young boys become radicalised, and duped into believing in rewards in the afterlife for martyrdom, because of how trusting they are of authority. Thus in these scenarios of war and oppression, childhood innocence can be destroyed when the innocence is exploited.
The Chimney Sweeper is one of many poems in which Blake explores the harshness of his era, railing against what he sees as corrupt institutions such as the Church. It mirrors a poem of the same title in the ‘Songs of Innocence’ collection, and is a darker sequel to that. Whilst the narrator of that is an innocent child, in Experience, an adult narrator encounters a young chimney sweeper in pain in the snow. Here, childhood innocence is destroyed as the church encroaches on the freedoms of childhood, robbing children of their youth.
Text 1: Close analysis of passage w.r.t. the Global Issue (2 minutes)
Genre factures; POV and/or characterisation; dialogue; setting ; stylistic/lexical choices; imagery/figurative language; sound effects; structure
I’ll begin with The Chimney Sweeper. The poem opens with “a little black thing in the snow”. Referring to the child as a ‘thing’ seems to dehumanise him, and shows that he is unrecognisable (because he is so covered in soot). He is stripped of his individuality and his childhood.
The meter has roughly four anapaests per line, creating a rhythm like a nursery rhyme. The distinctly childlike sense is ironic, because of the grimness of the poem. After all, the ‘thing’ is crying ‘in notes of woe’. The assonance here exacerbates this depressing, sing-song feel. The epizeuxis in the repetition, “weep! weep!” shows that he is suffering so much that he is unable to say anything else – it is likely that he should be saying ‘sweep’ but cannot.
We discover that the child’s mother and father have ‘gone up to the church to pray’. They have abandoned their responsibilities as parents to maintain appearances go going to church, whilst the boy’s childhood is destroyed.
Thus we have the second part of the poem – the boy’s reply to the narrator. He says, “I was happy upon the heath”. The alliteration gives way to an upbeat image of the child playing on a heath. By linking childhood happiness with the outdoors, it contrasts with the claustrophobic interior of chimneys. Since the boy must substitute the freedom of the outdoors for this, we are shown how the freedoms and pleasure of his childhood are taken away.
There is a ‘partial rhyme’ with ‘heath’ and ‘death’, instead of a full rhyme, suggesting something is not right – the way the boy must now live his childhood is not natural. He is given the ‘clothes of death’ and forced to work in the chimneys – the clothes could refer to the soot that covers his body.
The boy puts up a façade that he is not in misery – he ‘sings and dances’, perhaps trying to retrieve some joy from his childhood, and so his parents with the backing of the church and state feel that they have done no wrong. Blake is criticising the institutions for structurally destroying the childhoods of young boys in this way. They go to praise ‘God and his priest and king’ – though they are loyal to the crown and to God, they pay no attention to the most innocent members of society.
Text 1: Wider textual knowledge w.r.t. the Global Issue (2 minutes)
Consider other points in text where Global Issue is explored; discuss ways in which the reader’s response is affected by authorial choices. Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of the text as a whole.
Having seen how the destruction of childhood innocence is explored in that poem, we can turn to how it is present more broadly in Blake’s poetry.
In Holy Thursday from the Songs of Innocence, we see orphaned and abandoned children going to church in their droves. The ‘multitude’ of orphans is a criticism of how complacent society can be about so many young children having their childhoods destroyed as they don’t have parents.
There is much reference to just how many children there are – polysyndeton used to show how many colours are being worn – again, Blake is blaming society for the number of abandoned children. Either so many parents have been killed by poverty and such, or they have been forced to abandon their children.
Whilst poems like Infant Joy depict what childhood ought to be – a precious and sacred time, of pure ‘joy’, poems like Holy Thursday, The Chimney Sweeper, and Infant Sorrow portray what it actually was.
In the latter for example, the father of the new born speaker ‘weeps’ – perhaps not just from joy, but wondering how he is to support it in a world of rampant poverty and child labour. Blake describes how it is a ‘dangerous world’ in which people are suffering as soon as they arrive.
In The Chimney Sweeper from The Songs of Innocence, we see the point of view of the chimney sweeper himself (as opposed to an older narrator as in Experience). In the imagination of Tom Dacre, we see an idyllic representation of childhood, running down a green plain. This stands in contrast to their reality, with the narrator’s mother dead and his father having sold him to get stuck in chimneys. The innocence of that dream – the instinctive sense of what childhood ought to be like – coupled with the boys’ hardships emphasises the sheer extent to which their childhood innocence has been destroyed.
The end of that poem, suggesting that they ought to do this duty and never fear harm suggests that the naivete of the young makes them easily manipulable so their childhoods can be taken.
Text 2: Close analysis of passage w.r.t. the Global Issue (2 minutes)
Genre factures; POV and/or characterisation; dialogue; setting; stylistic/lexical choices; imagery/figurative language; sound effects; structure
This links to my extract from Persepolis. When Marjane’s maid discovers that her son’s school has been manipulating him to give his life for a fictitious reward in the afterlife, she is shown from several angles, leading to the impression that her appearance varies between panels. This makes her more abstract, representing all the families whose children are being manipulated like this.
As a symbol of this manipulation, her son was given a plastic key painted gold. This represents the superficially beautiful dreams children are being sold; but it is actually just a trinket. The scale of manipulation is an indictment of how the innocence of children is exploited, to turn them into pawns of war, hence destroying their childhood innocence.
She says, “Yeah, well he’s fourteen years old, that’s [women] exciting”. This shows that he is perhaps not so innocent, as it is lustful and avaricious desires that are used to appeal to boys of his age. Again, the former innocence of a child is eroded in stressful situations like war – just as Marjane had a cigarette earlier.
We also see Marjane very stressed out by the maid’s reaction. She simply asks, “You ok?” in the second panel, and offers to make some tea upon hearing that she isn’t. She is silent throughout the exchange, and has her arm around her in panel 7 – she is soothing and trying to help, but out of her depth. Having left for school, she is shown alone and dejected in a panel, thinking of her cousin. The war, and seeing how her peers are being tricked to die, causes her to think about other children in her own family and whether they would be beguiled in the same way.
When Marjane’s mum sits the boy down to tell him those stories are made up, his innocence and immaturity is shown in his inability to think seriously about the future – flippantly saying he’ll marry Marjane. Thus we see that this is the sort of child whose life will be lost: one unable to make the choice for himself.
Text 2: Wider textual knowledge w.r.t. the Global Issue (2 minutes)
Consider other points in text where Global Issue is explored; discuss ways in which the reader’s response is affected by authorial choices. Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of the text as a whole.
We can situate this theme of the destruction of childhood innocence more broadly in Persepolis. It is, after all, a coming of age story.
It opens with Marjane and her friends not understanding the meaning of the veil imposed by the Islamic Republic, using it as a plaything. Since children take their cues about what is normal from adults, they first emulate the roles of soldiers and torturers in their games, showing the perverse effect of being a child in this world.
Marjane is not able to outwardly rebel much beyond improperly covering her veil; she is forced to learn subtlety, and to make decisions about how much risk and punishment she is willing to take on for her principles. She sees her parents appear like good citizens whilst committing secret political infractions; such a double-life is difficult for a child to come to grips with.
Although trained to respect her elders, she realises that with the rise of a new regime, she has been taught to think contradictory thinks about the old ruler. Children are naturally trusting and innocent, but her surroundings have taught her she cannot be, and must think for herself about political realities - in short, she must grow up, which is a difficult but unfortunately necessary task for her in this environment.
As a teenager, Marjane has a cigarette to rebel against her mother’s strict ‘dictatorship’. She feels like this marks her transition to adulthood, but it is actually quite a childish coping mechanism – a symbol of insubordinacy. She is keenly aware on the childhood she has missed out on, and craves it; but also is aware that her every move is consequential. She takes out her frustrations with this cigarette, a symbol of her abandoning the innocence of a child – that could never be hers.
Conclusion (1 minute)
Draw comments to a close with final reflections on the ways each writer has addressed the global issue & impact on you as a reader
Message of each text?
Therefore we have seen how Blake describes the exploitative nature of his time as having a profound effect on children, robbing them of their youth and innocence. His message is that children should be free, and that society should do better for them. The destruction of childhood innocence leads to much suffering, and a sick society that is indifferent to caring for them.
Satrapi’s account is less about how society maltreats children, but how they are ignored whilst political events unfold. In their most formative years, children are forced to abandon the innocence and naivete of their childhood, and forced to come to grips with the reality of death. If they do not, they are used as pawns in political games, being impressionable and tricked into going to their death.
The destruction of childhood innocence is a key theme in both texts – the authors warn us that either abuse or apathy for children causes them to grow up in misery; and of how important it is that such innocence and joy can be maintained without interruption. Whether we are worried about the cleanness of our chimneys, or the political realities of our country, we must never forget to account for what children experience in their formative years – their innocence is a virtue not to be exploited.
Result
Raw & Moderated Mark: 39/40 (Grade 7)