Oppositional Christian Symbolism and Salvation in Blake’s America: A Prophecy

William Blake’s America: A Prophecy illustrates the ineffectiveness of a nation’s reliance on oppositional codes to define the care of its citizens. The rigid nature of dichotomies, such as those embedded within The Book of Isaiah and The Book of Revelation, prevents necessary national change in times of socio-political oppression. America demonstrates that if the rigidity of religious binaries influences the philosophy and behaviour of lawmakers and statesmen they will not achieve the national development to which they aspire. As laid out in America, the oppositional nature and non-interactive state of Christian binaries renders them static and non-progressive to human development. America takes these binaries and transforms them into what Blake calls “contraries,” which embody a multiplicity of states that exist in fluid interaction to neutralize Biblical imagery (into a state of neither “good” nor “evil”) and to promote a regenerative socio-political system. For example, in the “Preludium” to America, the daughter of Urthona says to Orc: “thy fire and my frost / Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent.” The energy, or “lightning,” of Orc breaks the firm distinction between fire and frost. This scenario’s blurring together of binaries through rebellious energy transforms them into contraries that do not exist in opposition but in a state of necessary tension. This transformation of binaries is equally apparent in the Angel’s transformation into a devil in Marriage of Heaven and Hell. There is no distinction between angel and devil but there is rather a fluid bridge between the two. Blake outlines his philosophy of contraries in “The Argument:” Heaven as a representation of good and hell as that of evil are binaries created by the “religious” that render these people passive and inactive. According to Blakean philosophy, Christian binaries are dangerous if they are not approached as contraries in constant flux and co-existence. The speaker places these dual concepts in tandem with one another to demonstrate a relationship that is necessary for a person’s development and, on a larger scale, for a nation’s energetic “progression.” In orthodox Christian belief, binaries often represent God’s act to distinguish between those, on the one hand, who are obedient to his law and worthy of his salvation and, on the other, those who refuse to obey and conform. Examples of these symbolic binaries are the biblical story of the gentle sheep defending themselves against the lion or the viper that threatens God’s faithful. It is known from Christopher Rowland’s Blake and the Bible and Leslie Tannenbaum’s Biblical Tradition in Blake’s Early Prophecies that the King James version of The Book of Revelation and The Book of Isaiah are central to many of Blake’s works. Both Isaiah and Revelation symbolize those who are disobedient to the laws of God within forms deemed opposite to the divine; these people are unworthy rebels not suited for salvation. There is an observable relationship between biblical Christian binaries and Blakean contraries within America. Blake’s America represents a revolutionary force in the form of the creature “Orc.” What the current field says about Orc’s role in America is various. Blake scholars David Erdman and Mark Schorer interpret Orc as a character of positive change through revolution, while other scholars view Orc’s rebellion as representative of futility. Northrop Frye’s argument that Orc is an ambiguous creature that continually undergoes a seven-stage cycle of development is well known and, at times, contested by scholars such as Erdman and Christopher Hobson. Frye argues that Orc is the “power of rejuvenation” who undergoes a very human cycle of birth, death, and rebirth throughout Blake’s poetry to represent the “American …