Marxist views can be frequently spotted in the works of William Blake. The argument that “human interactions are driven by economics and are based on a struggle for power between different social classes” is deeply rooted in Blake's work. (Gardner, page 146). In fact, “The Chimney Sweep,” first published in 1789, a half-century before Karl Marx first published his Marxist theory in 1848, features several examples of Marxist tones. Critic Janet E. Gardner argues that theological similarities between the views expressed in the poem "Chimney Sweeper" and the beliefs of Karl Marx are easy to find. For example, Karl believed that literary characters could be “divided into powerful oppressors and their powerless victims (Gardner, p. 145).” Similarly, Blake presents the character of Tom Dacre as a victim accepting the horrific indictment as part of the economic arrangements. An arrangement created to sell and buy children solely for the purpose of working them and crippling them into deadly labor. Both Marx and Blake note that child labor could have ended earlier, but the naive state of mind of the characters described presents them in a dream as a nostalgia that even when they "wake up in the dark" , Tom “was [still] happy and warm. Continuing, the Church or government controls the minds of laboring children; Blake echoes in an extreme sense the fact that children do not see the truth or the “light” and end up settling for the realities of their lives. Similarly, Blake's details suggest that the church brainwashes children into believing that, during tedious and cruel hours, or if Tom "was a good boy, he would have God for a father" (Blake in Sweeper, L 18-19). » Blake depicts a metaphysical challenge to customs...... middle of paper ...... power struggle between social classes. Children were oppressed and led a minimal existence at a time when it was socially acceptable. In this work, Blake attacks the Church and the crown for perhaps their insensitivity to the difficulties of the latter's lowest class. The Church is used as a vehicle to set in motion the economic and customary roles of society. For example, the speaker is an unhappy and oppressed young boy; however, he continues to fulfill his societal obligations by heartbreakingly agreeing to speak out against the social and economic extremes that sell, buy, and ultimately kill and cripple children in harsh working conditions. Only when people accept the cruel reality of their destructive behavior from their past will these horrible events stop continuing or repeating themselves in the future..