The Idea of Borrowed Belief
This is one of the poems that start with a very clear direction but has so many layers coated beneath the center idea.
The idea of child labor is disturbing enough, but looking more closely at how oppression develops opened a concept that I feel isn’t fully explored yet: borrowed beliefs. What intrigued me the most in this poem was Blake’s idea of how oppression can create a whole different belief system that no longer feels foreign and yet it exploits you without even realization.
A Belief Passed Peer to Peer
The poem starts with the narrator explaining his circumstances. How he ended up cleaning the chimneys. Of how he was sold when he was very young. After that the introduction of a new character, a young Tom happens. And we see how the narrator is comforting and consoling Tom to never mind losing the hair. The justification that comes from his peer and not someone else and maybe that’s why it was easier for Tom to believe it. Had it been an adult who consoled Tom, it might have been difficult for him to relate to. If it came from an authority figure it might have created distrust. But Blake makes it come from another sweep. Someone who has been into Tom’s shoes so that it doesn’t feel imposed. And that might play the biggest role in the beginning of forming a borrowed belief.
The Logic of the Dream
Dreams are often built from impressions we absorb while awake. Throughout the poem, we don’t see Blake describing anything similar happening to the kids to what Tom dreams. What he encounters in the dream is glorified labor work. That all his friends are risen from the coffins into heaven by an angel if they behave. And it ends with an angel instructing him that if he obeys, he will be rewarded. Now this, does not sound like a dream a child would have. Not at least without any kind of intimation. Blake could’ve written this whole scene as a dialogue. Like adults or masters instructing Tom but instead he chooses to convey this via a dream. By choosing a dream over a dialogue Blake avoids a space where Tom can question what he has been taught. I think the dream here is his way of showing how deep oppression has taken place in to Tom’s head. Perhaps so deep that he does not require an authority to force him to believe. Even in his sleep he is justifying the injustice that is happening to him by others. He has adapted the ideology so well that he believes it to be his own, because dreams don’t negotiate; they delude. The strongest evidence comes after the dream. Tom wakes, takes up his brushes, and returns to work without questioning what he has seen. If Blake had opted for a dialogue instead of a dream, it would require someone, here, Tom, to have ideas and belief of his own. Because there’s a lesser chance of someone following orders blindly while discussing the prejudiced rules. And thus, the selection of dream makes more sense because the children don’t have a chance to defend themselves. All they’re supposed to do is believe whatever they’ve been told.
Dreams don’t negotiate; they delude.
A Desire That Isn't a Child's
What bothers me is the dream. Dreams most often than not express our innermost desire. And a child who’s being captive or slave, his desire should be freedom or revenge or going back home. Instead, he dreams that if he follows order correctly, he might be rewarded after death. Which does not exactly sound like something a child would think of. That sounds like the repetition of instructions that’s been normalized already. And the religious language is just used to make the suffering acceptable. Because the angel doesn’t come to save him; he assures him to keep following orders for an imaginary hope. One of the less popular uses of dream here by Blake could also be to show psychological suffering. Physical traumas are more often than not visible, but it’s the deepest innermost traumas that go unnoticed. Here by using a dream, Blake clarifies that the children didn’t just suffer exploitation, they also suffered conditioning.
From 'I and Tom' to 'They'
Throughout the poem, we never actually hear about an adult or a church or a master and yet the ideology remains. No one asks if they should believe it, they just accept it. After the dream Tom and the narrator rise in the dark, cold morning, pick up their bags and brushes, and start working, not once wondering about a different consequence. Here what I found the most fascinating is the last two lines. By the end, Blake doesn’t even need the adults to speak because the children have already accepted the only fate they know. Now they actually have turned into the carriers of the borrowed ideology. Which suddenly sounds like a proverb rather than a conversation. It is almost as if something that is set in stone is being repeated. That too for a third party as the pronouns become they instead of I and Tom. And I think Blake did that intentionally.
The Last Word
“So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.”
Technically the narrator gets the last words but the way it is said, it makes me wonder if the narrator has accepted the ideology so deeply that now he repeats it naturally. I think that what was Blake might be trying to represent: The effect of systemic oppression. So much so that ultimately it blurs the line between someone else’s ideology and our own. Here the children are used as a representation of child labor and misuse of religious ideology but the other factor that shouldn’t be missed out is oppression by borrowed belief systems. Perhaps Blake’s darkest criticism is not that children are forced to work but they eventually begin speaking the language that keeps them working and does not let them escape the loop. In the end, they mistake borrowed beliefs for their own.
