Repetition In William Blake's 'The Old Smoke'

London, England is a popular and desirable location for every new traveler – it creates a posh and illustrious ambience for itself and holds much history. However, there is a dark side to “The Old Smoke” revealed by reading the poem London, by William Blake. Blake’s speaker uses repetition and visual imagery to illustrate the “woe”-filled (4) and unhappy chaos hiding behind London, England’s structured and genteel exterior. Repetition is a strong presence within the poem, and undoubtedly draws attention to most of the main ideas the speaker attempts to convey. When reading the first two stanzas, the expectation is that the last two stanzas will follow the same structure – a cycle of the same misery-inducing words coupled with new characters and locations. The repetition is effectively used to imply the importance of the chosen diction, such as the two uses of “charter’d” in adjacent lines (1-2). The streets are clearly very strictly separate, “charter’d” in a way that cannot be argued – so rigid are the rules of segregation that the speaker mentioned it twice! The speaker continues on to mention the “marks” of unhappiness or devastation twice, and uses the same word to describe his recognition of these characteristics in the “face(s) he meet(s)” (4). Again, we see the repetition used to draw attention to these figurative scars on the visages of the strangers passing by. The speaker also repeatedly uses the word “every” to express the “cry of… man” (5) and the “cry of fear” (6) coming from the infants of the city. “Every” human being here is afflicted with the same despair, seemingly. Despite any emotions the poem portrays, there …show more content…
The citizens are unhappy, dirty, abused, and controlled – a very different and shocking reality than what is widely perceived about the