The Clod and the Pebble Analysis

Thesis: The poet in The Clod and the Pebble illustrates contrasting interpretations of love based on the two characters William Blake portrays within the poem; by carefully incorporating parallelism, more specifically antitheses, the poet is able to constitute two interpretations of love based on the selflessness in the clod of clay and the selfishness of the pebble.

A.    William Blake characterizes both the clod of clay and the pebble to be selflessness and selfish, respectively, so that he can offer two distinct interpretations of love to the readers.

1.      Blake introduces quatrains in each description of both the clod of clay and the pebble to illustrate its interpretation of love. The key lines that dictate the character of both the pebble and the clod of clay are the first and last in each quatrain with exclusion to the second stanza in the poem. As Blake is introducing the clod of clay in the poem, the fact that “Love seeketh not Itself to please,… / And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.” (lines 4, 5) expresses the character of the clod of clay: innocent to love, and fairly new to the concept due to the fact that people who are new to love tend to enter a dreamlike, overreacted prelude in life. Blake intentionally includes antithesis in the poem to exaggerate the different interpretations of love in terms of the clod of clay and the pebble. Even though the poet is able to keep the same structure and phrases, Blake deliberately incorporates specific words to contrast both the pebble and the clod of clay and offer different meanings of love.

2.      The second stanza is offers an introduction to the characterization of the pebble by beginning a contrast to the clod of clay’s perspective of love. The same two lines appear in the description of the pebble: “Love seeketh only Self to please,… / And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.” (lines 9-12). The stanza for the pebble completely contradicts the perspective of the clod of clay according to the poet. Blake suggests, in general, that one who is experienced in love may perceive it as selfish, and as a result, act selfishly. He also suggests that one who is new to love is selfless and further constitutes that one will continue to feel this way until the individual, in this case the pebble, is struck by the experience of love.