Innocence and Experience: Contrary States of the Human Soul

An elderly man in a rocking chair smiles wisely down on a child playing quietly on the ground. What separates these two? Besides age, it is their experience. The child is said to be innocent, meaning that life's sorrows and joys have not yet altered the youth's outlook or attitude. To gain experience, like the elderly man, is to gain knowledge. Experience teaches the way things are, and replaces innocence with a sense of reality. In William Blake's five poems, "The Garden of Love," "The Echoing Green," "A Poison Tree," "Infant Joy," and "Infant Sorrow," these two contrary ideas of innocence and experience are revealed through the author's use of literary devices and themes.

In William Blake's poems "Infant Sorrow" and "Infant Joy," the reader is given two different perspectives of one's first stages in life. Both poems, however, portray a state of innocence. In "Infant Sorrow," the first speaker is two days old. The infant has yet to experience life, and is at the earliest state of innocence. The tone is that of joyfulness and celebration, even with the transition to a new speaker. The mother is also celebrating the wonderful new life, and the stanza in which she is speaking almost mirrors that of the infant's. The infant says, "I happy am / Joy is my name" (912). This newborn knows no other state of mind; therefore its name must be joy. To the mother, the infant also can only be called joy, not only because of its own state of happiness but because of the joy it brings her as well. The second poem, "Infant Sorrow," is from another perspective. The speaker is an infant, but an unhappy one, struggling with birth. The newborn cries, "Into the dangerous world I leapt / Helpless, naked, piping loud" (912). Innocence is viewed in a different way in this poem; the newborn is uncertain of its surroundings and what lies ahead. Succumbing to life is accepting that innocence will be lost, the newborn is struggling against entering a world with hurt, pain, and sorrow. "Infant Joy" views innocence as a complete state of bliss, while "Infant Sorrow" shows innocence as a safe haven from experiences in life.

The next two poems by William Blake can easily be compared, although one is almost an exact contrast to the other. "The Garden of Love" has a mood of sadness and disappointment that carries through Blake's entire piece of writing. The speaker is an older person, looking back on a place that used to be a familiar one. The memory this person has turns out to be far from reality; the speaker is crushed at the changes the place seems to have endured. Blake uses lots of imagery in this poem to give the reader a clear idea of what the speaker is seeing. He writes, "So I turn'd to the Garden of Love / That so many sweet flowers bore/ And I saw it was filled with graves" (757). The sweet flowers that once replaced the graves can represent the innocence that the speaker once had. With experience and changes in life, things can often turn out to be not what they seem. This is what the poem is revealing; once life has been experienced, that feeling of innocence can never again be reached. The last line of the poem, "And binding with briars my joys & desires" (757) displays the speakers wish to reach that point of innocence once more.

In "The Echoing Green," the speaker is a child, and the poem has a completely different mood than that of "The Garden of Love." Its mood is happy, cheerful, and playful. The child is caught up in the joys of youth, currently being "innocent" from the sorrow of life's experiences. The speaker says, "They laugh at our play / And soon they all say / 'Such, such were the joys'" (915). This refers to the elderly nearby that are looking back on the children with happiness; they are remembering the past just like the speaker in "The Garden of Love," but it is with a completely different attitude. The last stanza talks of the end of the day, "And sport no more seen / On the darkening Green" (915). The mood is still positive, however, as the closing is more of a feeling of content. In "The Garden of Love" childhood, youth, and innonence are all looked back upon with a feeling of sadness and disappointment. In "The Echoing Green" the playfulness of the poem remains constant.

The speaker of the last poem is different from those of the other poems, as the content and theme of the poem is also different. The contrary states of innocence and experience are not as obvious in William Blake's "A Poison Tree," they are hidden within the speaker's actions. The tone of the poem is childlike, which defines the speaker as an immature person. The first stanza has a transition from its tone of maturity into a childlike reaction that carries into the rest of the poem. Blake uses a religious allusion to the story of Adam and Eve in order to reveal the speaker's sin of holding in his wrath and allowing it to grow. In the beginning of stanza three Blake writes, "And it grew both day and night / Till it bore an apple bright" (759). The foe in the poem sees the speaker's anger, or the apple, and cannot help but to provoke this hatred. The last two lines, "In the morning glad I see / My foe outstretched beneath the tree" (759) reveal the foe's defeat. The speaker's reaction to this is very childish; the idea of being happy at another's distress. The speaker, as a young adult, is at an in between stage with innocence and experience. If the speaker was an older person, the situation may have been handled more carefully; experience would have taught this person how to rid of such feelings of anger. However, the speaker is not entirely innocent, as it seems that the growth of such wrath is not unexpected or resented.

In William Blake's poems, his view on the ideas of innocence and experience are expressed in several different ways. The use of imagery, mood, and differing perspectives is how Blake reveals the themes and shows the reader different states of the human soul. The amount of knowledge one has on life is what determines how a person will react to certain situations, face the reality of their memories, and appreciate the innocence they once had.

Works Cited

Barnet, Sylvan, William Burto, and William E. Cain, eds. Literature for Composition: Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 7^th ed. New York: Pearson 2005.

Blake, William. "The Echoing Green." Barnet, Burto, and Cain 914-915.

"The Garden of Love." Barnet, Burto, and Cain 757.

"Infant Joy." Barnet, Burto, and Cain 912.

"Infant Sorrow." Barnet, Burto, and Cain 912-913.

"A Poison Tree." Barnet, Burto, and Cain 757-59.