Similar Criticisms With Different Styles By Lord Byron and William Blake

Cain, written by Lord Byron, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, written by William Blake, have the same critical view of the church of the time and its doctrines; however, the way these two poets dictate their ideas in their works of art differs because of their different points of view and styles. Lord Byron, as the model for the Romantic Hero, is exactly like the heroes of Romantic Period works: melancholy, rebellious, alienated...These characteristics are present in the main character of his play, Cain. With the effect of his personality, which consists of these qualities, Cain, as a character, helps Byron criticize the Church’s traditional values, which ordain the followers of the Church and Christianity to follow God and the Bible without question or critical thinking. In the play, Cain questions life and death, the ways and understanding of punishment by God, and through these, he questions human nature. He quotes:

CAIN. […]

   Here let me dies: for to give birth to those

   Who can but suffer many years, and die

   Methinks is merely propagating Death,

    And multiplying murder. (27)

Cain's interrogation of the dualities in life and human nature, which are life and death, aids Lord Byron in conveying his criticism of the Church's followers' and the Church itself's blind obedience.Also, he depicts how one should accept the dualities of life that come with death and not name one of these concepts as evil while naming the other as good. William Blake defends a similar ideology to Byron.In his work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake states, "Without contraries is no progression" (3). He dictates that one should embrace the dualities of themselves and the nature surrounding them, just as Byron did. Through these ideas, Blake himself criticizes the same formation as Byron. The difference, however, starts with whom they put the blame for the rejection of dualities on. Byron implies that the problem is the society Cain is in, which lacks explanation of their beliefs and obedience to an "unjust authority" whom Cain believes to be Jehovah himself. In the analogy Byron created, society is equal to the Church, and Cain, whose story ends in a tragic way because of the agency of his rage that occurred as a result of his melancholy in his search for answers and explanations, is equal to anyone capable of interrogation and the followers of the Church. Blake, on the other hand, implies that the responsibility for the consequences of rejecting the dualities of nature belongs to the one who is weak enough to be restrained by any organization or themselves. "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling" (Blake, 5). Briefly, while both of these poets, since they bear the rebellious, questioning, and imaginative values of the Romantic Period, criticize the same constitution and its followers through similar themes, Lord Byron manages to do so by mainly aiming at the constitution in Cain, and William Blake does it by mainly aiming at the followers of the constitution in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.