For your commentary tonight, share some of your observations about William Blake's "The Garden of Love." You can provide your insights on both the poem and the image.
1. In class today, I told you that Blake is a very easy poet to read on the surface. His diction is generally simple and clear, his sentences are concise. Push yourself in your commentary to move beyond a surface-level reading of the poem. What is Blake really getting at here? He's not just writing about a visit to a garden, so what does he want his audience to consider or question by reading this work?
2. Important: Please read through the posts of students who comment before you do, so you can build on their ideas or pose alternative interpretations of the poem, rather than just restating assertions that have already been made. If someone has established a point that you yourself would have raised if you'd gotten to the blog sooner, then address other details in the poem or image that support your peer's arguments. If a peer makes an assertion that you do not believe is supported by the text, be sure to offer evidence and analysis that backs up your counterclaims.
If your post builds on or contradicts a peer's post, please reply to their commentary to keep this thread organized.
Remember to draft your commentary in a Google doc first. Your posts should be no more than 250 words, so please be succinct but precise.
The two images both depict what appears to be a grave with an adult leading a prayer with two children. The colors of all three people are nearly the same. The backgrounds however, vary greatly from each other. The first image contains a green, peaceful look, which the latter possesses a dark and gloomy portrayal of rotting nature. This ties back with to the theme of purity in children that so many Romanticists cherished at the time. The underlying message that William Blake tells us is that children should not be subjugated towards such harsh themes, therefore destroying their innocence. In his other images, the children are joyful, lively, and colorful, but in these images, they appear very despairing and monotonous.
ReplyDelete“The Garden of Love” by William Blake possesses quite a grim mood. Similarly to “The Ecchoing Green,” Blake once again mentions themes of the process of aging and a loss of innocence. The speaker’s attitude is dreary and sorrowful. The very first line opens with “I went to the Garden of Love,” immediately assuming a positive notion. These feelings of joy and exuberance however, quickly transitions into a disappointment, as the remainder of the stanza speaks in past tense with words such as “saw” and “used to.” In the second stanza, the gates of the Chapel closing and turning to the Garden of Love represent growing older. Then finally, in the last stanza, the mood turns grim and dark. Blake chooses to use this diction with “graves,” “tombstones,” “black gowns,” and “briars,” which symbolizes death, contrasting with the aforementioned “greens,” “love,” and “sweetness.” Furthermore, the abundance of “And” at the beginning of every line in this stanza represents the narrator's overwhelming fear of the outside world.
William Blake writes his poems that either establish ideas about experience or innocence. In the poem “The Garden of Love,” Blake develops the idea of experience and the loss of innocence. He states “Where I used to play on the green...That so many sweet flowers bore...And tomb-stones where flowers should be.” Blake has multiple areas in the poem where the idea he is getting at shifts. At the beginning of the poem he reminisces about his childhood playing on the green. In the second stanza, he talks about how religion shuts people out from nature and pleasure. In the last stanza, Blake expresses the way religion prevents pleasure and desires by “binding” them. Following the specific examples of flowers representing types of love, this poem paints a broader picture of flowers in a garden as the joys and desires of youth. When the speaker returns to the Garden of Love, he finds a chapel built there with the words “Thou shalt not,” written overhead. Blake is getting at the idea that through experience of organized religion, innocence is lost. Religion diminishes the innocence and the sense of curiosity in a person as well as forbidding them from enjoying the natural pleasures in life. The poem then shifts to the priests in black gowns. The diction is more demonic especially because the poem focuses on religion. The speaker also finds the garden taken over by the graves of “his pleasures” while a black-clad priest binds his “joys and desires” in thorns, “And I saw it was filled with graves, And tombstones where flowers should be.” He is criticizing the requirements and organized rules that religion demands everyone to follow. He sees religion as an aspect of society, with its demand that human beings must reject their self pleasures and desires to conform to a more one sided, controlling world.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that William Blake's poetry often encompasses experience and innocence, and most particularly the complications and hardships of experiencing a loss of that innocence (at the gain of experience). Blake often plays with time shifts, and that is seen in the poem 'The Garden of Love'. Blake delves into the repeated theme of reminiscing about childhood when he immediately describes how a chapel has been built over a garden that he used to play on as a child, with "gates [of this chapel were] shut", thus communicating the physical barrier that is posed between him and this once-garden. He uses the last stanza to create an image of a cemetery of flowers, essentially representing the death of his "joys & desires" that were present when the green used to be a place where he could play in his youth. I found it interesting when you suggested that religion could be the cause of a loss of innocence, and I agree. Religion, though often associated with the freedom and uplifting of spirit, can also be an oppressive force that causes people to conform and be submissive to a higher being, thus silencing creativity and individuality. Ultimately, I think that Blake wants those experiencing this piece to come to the conclusion that it is never truly possible to preserve the innocence that was once had in our youth, as more responsibilities and more complicated ways of organizing and interacting with life (i.e., religion) limit our ability to have the complete freedom and carelessness that we once had in the past.
DeleteWilliam Blake’s “The Garden of Love” is easy to read on the surface due to his simple and clear diction. The poem has a more significant meaning than going back to a garden that he frequented in his youth. In the first line of the poem “I went to the Garden of Love” signifies the importance the place means to him. Also “garden of love” suggests a place where beauty is cultivated. But now he noticed a change coming back to visit. On the third line of the first stanza “A chapel was built in the midst.” It is important to note the way he describes the chapel being built in the middle of the garden as it is a nuisance to him. Considering Blake is a nonconformist and of Romantic ideals the speaker may be dismayed by chapel built in the middle of the garden.
ReplyDeleteAfter noticing the gates to the chapel are shut he turns to the Garden of Love where “so many flowers bore” but now notices it is “filled with graves/ And tomb-stones where flowers should be.” The beauty of the garden once filled with life and beauty that he enjoyed in his youth is no longer there. It is now overtaken with death since the chapel was built. The chapel has a connection to religion which means Blake is critiquing the religious system for denying people the pleasures of nature. Religion causes people to lose their creativity and conform which is against Blake’s ideals.
With his poem “The Garden of Love” and the accommodating engraving, William Blake aims to criticize society for destroying places of free play and love, and conforming everyone to dull and negative norms. Blake observes a chapel built in the middle of the garden. The chapel conveys sense of conformity as everyone has to go there, everyone has to pray, everyone has to be sad. The same motif is seen in the engraving where the mother is showing her daughters how to properly mourn the dead relative. The girls are on their knees, mimicking their mother’s position, and they are crying. They might not know why they are doing it as death for many children is unknown, irrelevant thing, but they are already taught to cry and pray for the soul of this relative. Even priests “are walking their rounds” around the graveyard which reminded me of soldiers keeping order in a public place; they bind joys with “briars” which suggest confinement and discomfort.
ReplyDeleteBlake himself is the only one showing non conformity as he turns “to the Garden of Love”. Even if this garden doesn't exist anymore, Blake’s heart still faces towards playfulness and non conformity.
I agree that Blake criticizes something for destroying free play and love, but it is not society he accuses, he blames religion. In the engravings, the children are doing things that should be the least of their worries and that symbolizes their forced conformity. Evidently, the trio are revised to wear "black gowns" like how the priests are wearing which enhances their image of subjection to religion. Furthrmore, v. 2 changed one girl to a boy. This is important because it better reflects how all children are subjugated by religion.
DeleteBlake criticizes religion, not society. He suggests that religion actually controls society. Referring back to slate v. 2, a mother and her two children, a boy and a girl, are clad in black and praying. Plus, we know that there are black robes priests patrolling the garden. This reveals to us that religion controls society by having its men be the enforcers and women and children as its forced and devout believers. It is not too much of a far-fetched claim because clergy members were mostly men at the time and it was their duty to force Christianity down the throats of everyone.
Blake favors the land of nature to the world of grey and darkness, and would point towards the engravings to prove it. In the two different versions, we can see a dramatic shift in the two images, both in color and in the actual drawing. Despite the fact that they seem to be based on the same engraving, one is much morel lively, while the other is dark and depressing.
ReplyDeleteBasically, both of the images are depicting similar things, a group of women, reverently observing something. However, in the first image, as with the past that Blake describes, the women seem to be enjoying nature, a beautiful environment, something reminiscent of the garden that he refers to in the past. However, in the second image, the women are more solemn. They are surrounded by grey instead of the lovely green. By providing this contrast, it can show the negative and sad attitude that he has towards the harsh and dank world that replaced the beautiful world of nature.
In “The Garden of Love”, Blake describes how the pressures of organized religion can damage the innocence of children, uprooting playfulness for stern duties. Although the speaker is not a child, as evidenced by the phrase “used to” with regards to his experience in the garden, he is highly aware of the role that the green played in his early life, and resents the intrusion of the church, feeling that it prevents them from playing at all. The narrator includes that the gates of the new building “were shut”, an image that implies exclusion and strictness, rather than the welcoming aspects of the open garden that had been there before. Additionally, the closed doors symbolize repression, aided by the phrase “thou shalt not” carved into the space above them. This phrase implies that the church forbids any kind of activity that they themselves do not condone, thus restricting the playfulness or free spirit of children, which Blake has been shown to value both in “The Echoing Green” itself and its accompanying illustrations.
ReplyDeleteLater on, Blake juxtaposes the “sweet flowers” with “graves” that now stand in their place, mirroring the process of aging in his other poems, by showing the change over time as something that replaces fleeting beauty with a sense of death and decay, more concrete but less appealing imagery. Since the headstones are adjacent to the chapel, a religious building, one can infer that Blake intends to criticize the effect that religion has upon children, suggesting that it’s rules ruin their ability to express themselves as they usually would. Meanwhile, the priests themselves convey darkness, with their “black gowns” creating a repressive, shadowed atmosphere in a place originally known for it’s love and natural beauty.
Adding onto this comment, I feel as though he is more nostalgic and sorrowful than resentful. Although he can be seen as resenting the effects of organized religion, he specifically focuses on his past self and the memories he once had with The Garden of Love. He remembers the old ways that the garden used to bring him joy and laughter and how he feels a great deal of sorrow that it is no longer what it used to be. The title of the poem and the meaning of the poem juxtapose themselves entirely, this garden is his garden of former love that has been taken over by organized religion. As he grew older, and as time went on, the effects that religion has on children grew compelling and stronger than joy and freedom. The garden of love is supposed to represent something glorious, free and beautiful, which it once did. But due to this transformation, the garden of love is resting below what is now a negative and hash atmosphere.
DeleteIn the poem “The Garden of Love,” William Blake tone seems to be confident as it seems that the reader has been here before, as he expects it to look a certain way. This is a place the narrator seems to come a lot, and it's weird because it seems to be a cemetery but instead of having a sad atmosphere it's more of a place of respect. Where they decorate it with flowers and sweet colors, to me the fact that it's called the Garden of Love stands out. The narrator is trying to portray how as a youth this place looked magical and beautiful but as he returns as an adult you start to see the reality of how it looks, it's really a dark and sad place where people decay. The doors are closed and say “Thou shalt not,” meaning no one can come through and are not open to people who have changed. This could represent that now that he's an adult, the church doesn't accept him for what he has become by leaving and breaking the rules. By this the title, “The Garden of love” could indicate a juxtaposition of a person who is being compared from an adult to a kid and how people and setting around him affects him in a different way.
ReplyDeleteI would like to disagree about the meaning of the church and the author's tone. The author's tone was one of nostalgia. He seems to reminisce the times in which he would "play" on the green. The "green" seems to represent the idea of freedom that the speaker used to have. Although the speaker did used to play around this area, he doesn't seem to respect it. Instead he seems to criticize the chapel. The "chapel" that was built in the midst connotes a religious meaning. Chapels are where religious activities take place and places of religious activities. This contrasts with the ideals of romanticism, such as freedom. Furthermore, Instead of the church not accepting the speaker, I feel like the speaker doesn't accept the church. In a religion there is a set institution and a sense of conformity. In the "Thou shalt not", It seems to reflect this set standard of religion and those who do not follow it can not enter. But in the end, I can agree that "The Garden of Love" does compare a child to an adult and how things have changed since childhood.
DeleteIn “The Garden of Love”, William Blake criticizes organized religion for the abduction of childhood innocence. The speaker of the poem is an adult, but remembers when he was a child and “used to play on the green”. This newly built chapel is harsh and sturdy: the gates are shut and has “thou shalt not” written over the door. This description indicates that the chapel only allows people to act and behave in a certain way, and restricts the play that the speaker remembers once took place in the same spot. In comparison to the green and the flowers, the chapel is dull and synthetic. Blake portrays the chapel similarly to how Hawthorne portrays the prison, both have a demanding presence and represent harsh conformity. Graves replace flowers, and the priests bind the speaker’s “joys & desires”. The priests are not only physical manifests of the church, but also embody a sense of darkness, which imply that their intents are and repressive. The speaker’s free and natural childhood is now replaced with a man made institution, and through this shift, Blake suggests that organized religion inherently shuns the individuality and liberation found in childhood. This idea is also conveyed through Blake’s use of rhyme and rhythm. In both the first two stanzas, the second and fourth lines rhyme, but in the last stanza, none of the lines rhyme at all. This final stage in the chapel’s existence serves to consume the innocence of childhood and replace it with a system of conformity.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Blake criticizes how religion robs people of their childhood in his poem "The Garden of Love" and the accompanying engravings. In the poem, the speaker revisits the “green" they used to play on as a child to find it has been turned into a “Chapel.” For the speaker, the green represents childhood and the happy memories they have from that time in their lives. Having this place physically taken over by a religious building symbolizes an intrusion into children's lives, specifically the joyful parts of those lives.
ReplyDeleteBlake’s use of works like “shut" “graves" and “briars" creates a dark and dismal tone. This demonstrates how the replacement of childhood fun with rigid rules is a negative thing. The engravings support this somber tone. Both depict three people kneeling in front of some kind of stone. The first still has some of the green seen in the engravings from “The Ecchoing Green" but the second is devoid of almost all color except gray. In both engravings the figures have been stripped of the happy, vibrant colors seen with “The Ecchoing Green.” The people in these engravings show no signs of happiness. This tone helps to develop the idea that religion has a negative effect on childhood.
With this short poem, "The Garden of Love", William Blake is able to introduce his nightmare experience at the garden. Starting off, Blake paints for the reader, childlike and innocent scene. “Garden” and “Love” are words that convey pleasant associations. A garden is usually a place that's fresh, quiet and beautiful and love is simply the universal word that that holds an abundance of positive connotations. “The Garden of Love” is a memorial place for the speaker as words like “play” tells us he was probably a child when he knew this place and the word “used to” represents a memory. This pleasant and reminiscent feeling immediately take a shift in the second stanza.
ReplyDeleteThe speaker soon found out that the chapel was nothing of expected. “The gates of this chapel were shut” signifies the separation from contact with god because a chapel is a religious building that serves to be a place for prayers. By closing the “gates”, this ultimately states that the bond with god is broken. Furthermore in the third stanza, the portrayal of the garden took a dramatic shift from this pleasant area filled with positive memories to a place filled with horror and darkness. What the speaker saw in the graves was it being “filled with graves” and “tombstones where flowers should be”. Graves and tombstones symbolize death which is an unpleasant event in life. In addition, the garden has basically transformed into a graveyard that is usually a site filled with negative emotions and memories. I believe this poem overall criticizes the church because of its false representation of Christianity and god’s ideals.
In “The Garden of Love,” William Blake’s tone is hopeful but sadly mournful. He uses these tones in order to demonstrate how reason and religion destroy the human spirit. Blake idolizes the freedom of the human spirit, and is hopeful to see it reimagined when he goes to the Garden of Love, but instead sees that “a Chapel was built” on it, the essence of reason squandering the freedom of the green. He then turns to the “many sweet flowers” he once knew, but instead sees “graves” and “Priests in black gowns.” He is hopeful at first because he remembers the freedom of childhood, but becomes mournful when he sees it lying dead. The image of the graves denotes physical death, but in this case it connotes mental and spiritual death. My peers have said that this illustrates how religion obliterates the innocence of childhood, but I want to make that idea a bit broader. I think that religion represents reason in general, as Blake seems to somewhat support in religion, as evidenced by our background research on him. Also, I think Blake wants us to understand that it kills all human spirit for a few reasons. One is that the Chapel and the graves have a detrimental effect on him as he looks at them, demonstrating their effect on him as an adult. Also, childhood innocence is a tangent of the freedom of the human spirit, and he uses the childhood innocence to represent that larger idea.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Blake’s “The Garden of Love” criticizes how religion limits people from experiencing the world as they once did. The narrator goes to the Garden of Love and discovers that a chapel has been built within it. The gates of it are closed. The fact that gates are closed symbolizes either that nobody can enter or that nobody can leave. In other words, once you join a religion, there is no way of revisiting the world in the same way as a child would; it takes away one’s innocence. “There were tombstones where the flowers should be” refers to the grim reality of life replacing innocent nature of childhood, or perhaps the death of childhood in general. Each flower is a child and each tombstone is a child that has grown up. His tone is a mix of sorrow and mourning for the loss of the child-like lives people had once lived, as reflected by his death-related imagery and diction. The tombstones and dark overtone create a foreboding and depressing atmosphere.
ReplyDelete"The Garden of Love" by William Blake ultimately describes organzied religion's destruction of mankind by tying the garden that was once played on by children in "The Ecchoing Garden" to the chapel that was built upon that same garden. As the speaker visits the once youthful garden, he notices that there was a religious institution built upon the same land he played on in his youth, noticing how the gates were "shut" and was unable to enter, as well as being unable to "writ" over the door. The restriction of the gate depicts the speaker's lack of acceptance into the cruel world of adulthood, as their childhood, and therefore innocence, was destroyed in its physical form, being replaced with an organized institution that devalues questioning, the very essence of child behavior. The inability to writ on the door demonstrates the speaker's inability to reform religion's destruction of the youth.
ReplyDeleteIn William Blake’s “The Garden of Love,” he touches on how time changes everything. The speaker, probably adult now, visits the garden of love to find that the surroundings aren’t what they used to be. Sorrow-filled words like “used,” “bore,” and “should be” reveals the speaker’s sadness of how his favorite place has become more adult and serious. He expresses a sense of longing for wanting the once innocent place back. The garden used to be filled with “sweet flowers” that have now turned into “tombstones.” The speaker also compares words like “black gowns” and the “green” of the garden to reveal that his childhood has been obstructed by adulthood.
ReplyDeleteThe sad tone used by the speaker suggests that the garden made him happy through words like “play.” The garden of love was a place of happiness and inclusion where now, it has become a place of mourning and religion. To add, it isn’t as open for everybody. Ultimately, Blake wants the readers to understand that overtime, things become less and less pure. It’s almost as if the speaker's growing up, the garden, the symbol of childhood, grows up too.
I meant to add: The garden also symbolizes the start of life whereas the the cemetery and chapel symbolizes the end of life.
DeleteIn “The Garden of Love” Blake repeatedly contracts the origins of the garden to the current stature of it in order to demonstrate the conformity on children through religion. The engravings that accompany the poem depict what seems like adolescents kneeling down next to a priest looking rather grim. Both the revised and original engraving illustrate the somber kids in order to portray how religion crushes the spirits of children with its strict lifestyle. Additionally, the revised engraving contain gray colors instead of the original engraving which has slight dark shades of green. Yet within these contracts in the colors of the surroundings, the figures remain grey throughout both. This reinforces the idea that the children remain obstructed by religion and can not be children. Nevertheless, in the poem, the narrator’s tone stays solemn throughout the three stanzas with a subtle hint of disappointment. Initially, the narrator discovers that a Chapel lies where they ‘used to play on the green.’ The past tense term ‘used to’ illustrates a sense of sadness for what the garden originally represented. Now this generation could not ‘play’ like the narrator did, a common thing children do to express joy. The children of the current generation could not experience what the garden had given the other children due to its obtrusive nature. Furthermore, the ‘sweet flowers’ that the garden could give was now covered with ‘tomb-stones’. The contrast between a plant that gives the onlooker a feeling of comfort and beauty with an object that not only relates to death but is grave, illuminates how the church destroyed any sense of merriment that could have been offered by the garden. Ultimately, the desires of children were ‘binded’ with the restriction of the church. The use of the word bind demonstrates how the church obligates children to unwilling let go of their free spirited nature and fall under the rigidness of the laws of church. The narrator’s tone finalizes the notion that church strips children of glee and conforms them into cold beings.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Blake’s poem “The Garden of Love” is about the Speaker’s resentment to a Chapel that brought dismal and death to his or her favorite place. I still am puzzled with why there are two images, because the one with the people in black parallels with what is described in the book. Anyways, from what I can flesh out of the poem, Blake criticizes religion for draining the life out of children. He does this by employing symbolic details. A Chapel is one of the basic facilities that branch from Catholicism, and Blake includes “Thou shalt not” as a label on this Chapel. The resonates like the commandments; for instance, thou shalt not kill and so on. This particular phrase, “Thou shalt not” is an answer to the speaker’s pleasure of playing in the Garden of love. In other words, Blake uses the Chapel to represent Catholicism, and includes “Thou shalt not”, to convey how religion prevents people from connecting back to whatever the Garden of Love represents. What I believe the Garden of Love represents is all of what the speaker cherishes. In the third stanza, the speaker reveals that his “joys & desires” were seized away with the establishment of the Chapel. So ultimately, Catholicism, or religion in general, robs people of their happiness and wishes.
ReplyDeleteIn William Blake's "The Garden of Love", the "chapel built in the midst of the [green], where the author 'used to play' emphasizes his disappointment and frustration at the morbid and conformable religion invading what he found sanctuary in. The pictures drawn in the images represent these feelings, the transition from a peaceful, reassuring greenery to a burning, gloomy burning forest. This allows the author to show his contempt and resentment at the chapel for inadvertently 'restricting' his ability to feel joy and happiness from the greenery, the "Garden of Love" turned against him. The speaker's tone is resigned and sad, keeping in theme the narrative direction the poem takes. One can take that the speaker is very sincere in his writing, as the sentimental value of the "Garden of Love" is tarnished by the insertion of the chapel. This leads us to believe that William Blake is fearful of journeying outside his comfort zone, as new things in his "garden" terrify him (or the speaker).
ReplyDeleteThe speaker’s attitude in Garden of Love is grim and also hopeful. The speaker in William Blake’s A Garden of Love is an adult who once played on the green as a child. The green was once representative of youthfulness, joy, and the arrival of spring. After they are not able to open the Chapel door they turn to the Garden of Love where they expect to see “sweet flowers”, a symbol for memories, love, and sympathy. This is when the shift of the poem occurs, “So I turn’d to the Garden of Love”. To their disbelief, the Garden of Love, a place that held many childhood memories was now filled with “grave” and “tomb-stones”. The speaker was hopeful of returning to the sweet memories of his childhood by seeing the beautiful nature of the green. However, the green was now a place of despair, sorrow, and death. It no longer welcomed the children’s play, instead, there were weeping children and “Priests in black gowns”. Through this, Blake criticizes the church’s ability to emphasize and exaggerate death, even to children. The poem becomes grim both in mood and tone in the way that Blake creates a dramatic change between the speaker’s memories and their reality. Even in the images, William Blake engraves both images with contrasting colors that convey opposite moods. In one, he paints with vibrant colors like green that symbolize youthfulness and joy. In the other, he paints with dark and dull colors, emphasizing the despair and sorrow that now haunts the green. In image 1 there are growing trees and flowers and in image 2 there are prickly bushes and dead trees. Ultimately, Blake elucidates through his poetry and art the depressing and harsh reality of being grown-up.
ReplyDeleteIn Blake's "The Garden of Love" there is a very familiar feeling that is projected by the speaker. The nostalgia initially introduced is combatted by despair. As humans we innately become attached to things that resonate with our youth. Youth is a molding period in which we develop into our future selves. The speaker looking at the green, the green was a place that signified jubilance, youth and a care free demeanor. When this is stripped away and turned into a place to symbolize death, it also strips the speaker of their joy. Additionally, the tomb stones laying where flowers should grow implies a fear of growing older. The bed of flowers that represents growth and life is now gone. In place are decaying bodies who are now a part of the earth. However, here there is no more life and this seems to scare the speaker into a realization they may have been avoiding. The two images that go along with the poem also support the idea that age is frightening to the speaker. The adult figure in the images allows the children to clutch onto him as he tells a story about where they are. While recounting these stories the children look almost lifeless and absent. It is as if the child within the speaker has also died and these two children represented his innocence.
ReplyDeleteAsking questions with a yes/no answer can be the starting point of a good discussions, but only if there is a follow-up question that calls for explanation or substantiation. Otherwise, yes/no questions tend to be conversations-stoppers. By the same token, discussions can stall if the instructor's questions are overly leading, i.e., if there awriter.org
ReplyDeleteis clearly an answer the instructor wants, and the students' task is simply to guess it, rather than to think for himself.