Blake's Self-Made Squalor in LondonThe poet William Blake paints a picture of the dirty and miserable streets of London in his poem "London". He describes the wretched from the bottom of society, chimney sweeps, soldiers and prostitutes. These people are screaming because of their pain and the injustices done to them. The entire poem centers on the laments of these people and what they have become because of the wrongs done to them by the rest of society, primarily institutions such as the Church and the government. But are these people really wronged? The poem seems to suggest that the injustices they have been subjected to are of their own making. In Blake's poem, he says that when he walks through London, he sees a "mark on every face [he] meets/marks of weakness, marks of woe." » (3-4) He says that everywhere he hears cries of fear and repression. The church seems to ignore the cry of the poor chimney sweep in lines nine and ten. The soldier dies on the palace walls, sighing. These are examples of the misery of life that people lead. The central idea...