The Chimney Sweeper

Tom Dacre’s dream has obvious religious connotations, since it is an Angel that liberates the boys from the coffins of oppression and exploitation. Blake draws from a long Christian tradition of understanding dreams as messages from God. There are many figures in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, whom God visits in their sleep. Also, Angels are often represented as God’s messengers. Therefore, from a religious perspective, Tom’s dream reveals that God looks upon him and other chimney sweepers favorably and offers them love and joy after death as a reward for their worldly sorrows. It is through Christian faith that the boys will be freed from the hardship they experience—if they are good boys.

From a psychological perspective, however, the dream signifies Tom’s unspoken desire for love and freedom, which are scarce in his everyday existence. He is too young and too innocent to express this desire in words—or to turn it into a demand—but his dream conveys what is just below the surface of Tom’s consciousness. Since he is raised on conservative Christian principles, his unconscious desires, even in dreams, are reduced to a moralizing religious message: There is no other road to happiness but through Christian salvation, which must be earned through obedience to social and religious authorities. From this point of view, Tom’s dream reveals how thoroughly he has been brainwashed into being unable to imagine any other way of striving for a better life.