Marxist views can often be detected in the works of William Blake. The argument that “human interactions are driven by economics and are based on a power struggle between different social classes” is deeply rooted in the lines of Blake's work. (Gardner, p. 146). Indeed, “The Chimney Sweep,” first published in 1789, half a century before Karl Marx first publicized his Marxist theory in 1848, contains 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 easily found. For example, Karl believed that literary characters could be “divided into powerful oppressors and their powerless victims (Gardner, Pg. 145).” Likewise, Blake presents Tom Dacre's character as an accepting victim of the horrific indictment of economic settlements. An agreement created to sell and buy children only to work them and paralyze them in fatal labor. Both Marx and Blake note that child labor could have ended sooner, but the naïve mentality of the characters described presents them in a dream-like nostalgia that even when they “woke in the darkness,” Tom “was [still] happy and warm. Continuing, the church or government controls the minds of laboring babies; Blake echoes in an extreme sense the children who do not see the truth or the “light” and end up settling for the reality of their lives. Likewise, Blake's details suggest that the church brainwashes children into believing that, through boring and cruel hours, or if Tom “were a good boy, he would have God for his father (Blake in Sweeper, L 18-19)”. Blake describes a metaphysical challenge to the usual... middle of paper... power struggle between social classes. Children were oppressed and had a minimal existence in a time when it was socially acceptable. In this work, Blake attacks the Church and the Crown perhaps for their insensitivity towards the difficulties of the latter's lower economic class. The church is used as a vehicle to set in motion the economic and customary roles of society. For example, the speaker is a young, down-on-his-luck, downtrodden boy; however, it continues to fulfill its social obligations in its heartbreaking acceptance to point to the most devastating indictment against the social and economic extremes that sell, buy and ultimately kill and cripple children in harsh working conditions. It is only once people accept the cruel reality of the destructive behavior of their past that these horrific cases will cease to continue or repeat themselves in the future..