Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Good and Evil An illustrated collection of poems entitled, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, written and illustrated by William Blake shows a variety of perspectives. The innocent and pastoral world for a child pitted against a world of corruption and repression for adults. The same situation or problem is first presented through the perspective of a child and then shown from experience. The poem “The Lamb” is the counterpart for “The Tyger”, which shows two sides to the human soul: a bright…

Blake’s poems where influenced by his belief in God that allowed his writing to have depth. Blake has written countless of works but the ones that showcase God in all his glory is in his “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” This was a collection of poems by William Blake that appeared in two phases; innocence and…

This line from the song lyrics “Sounds of Silence” by Paul Simon depicts a dark and familiar silence that many know all too well. At some point, plenty of people experience a dark, and occasionally, scary loss that is typically emotionally somber and tough. For instance, the poem by Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays," looks back at his childhood of an unappreciated relationship. The following poem, “Nighttime Fires” by Regina Barreca, tells the loss of a little girl’s innocence due to her…

captures the innocence of the speaker’s past self, and innovatively mirror the process of growing up through the duality of two voices throughout the poem. A song of innocence and experience, Heaney presents a third-person perspective on the blossoming of blackberries, before transitioning to the first-person perspective. While the poem is structured as an iambic pentameter with occasional departures, the poem heavily employs slant rhymes and half-rhymes; Heaney captures the innocence of the…

thoughts because he argues that these thoughts could not just have come from nothing. In the second section of readings, page 178-203, there are poems that all can from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. These poems mostly revolve around children and the their perceptions of the world. In In Songs of…

the “human heart.” O’Brien’s novel teaches us that the “human heart” is fragile and the negative impacts of war can break it. Innocence and life are effected in return. Young men enter the war clenching onto they innocence. Unknowingly, they will be stripped from it. Mary Anne Bell—a significant character— is a symbol of innocence in the short story “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” At only seventeen, she is invited to the camp by her boyfriend, Mark Fossie. She arrives as an innocent girl,…

Holden was able to recognize the song and complimented the little boy mentally, that made him feel better. It made him feel not so depressed. After listening to the child, the quote came directly about Holden. It demonstrates that he is comforted when seeing the innocence and purity of uninfected kids in society being maintained. This childhood innocence is what Holden seems to long for later in the novel and what he strives to protect in others…

In our species’ long history, we have endlessly searched the answers to understanding the universe. For a very long time in Europe, Christianity put an end to this by claiming its dogmas held the answers we craved. Published in 1794 in Songs of Experience, William Blake’s “The Tyger” uses a critical and questioning speaker to reject the church’s teaching and revive our quest. This being his most popular poem, everything about it invites the readers to reconsider their stance on what they’ve been…

given a title through societal view. When Aaliyah was first introduced to the R&B world, she was identified and characterized as a little girl who did not have much experience in life. However, through her music, she drastically proved to the R&B world that she had much more experience in life than they had believed. In Aaliyah’s song, “Rock the Boat”, she said “I want you to rock the boat, work the middle, change positions and…

community within the time period and the development of jazz music as a form of self-expression. Despite having two dynamic main characters the plot moves forward with fluidity. This is mostly due to Baldwin’s use of ongoing themes such as loss of innocence, suffering and self-discovery that manifest in both of the leading characters. In “Sonny’s Blues”, the author utilizes music to highlight these themes…