In the poem, "London," the speaker hears and sees the signs of the oppression in his society. Blake describes images he sees in London, using them to stand for larger concepts and institutions. He uses images of darkness and gloom as symbolic objects of the subject and informs us how sexually transmitted diseases affected the rest of the household. In his society, Blake thought that certain institutions, particularly the church and government, reinforced the assumptions of war, poverty, and inferiority of women, and that these things were customary in the "order of things." With their minds set on these assumptions, the people in his poem feel oppressed and have lost hope to change their standing in life. So, while the entire poem is centered on the cries of these people, by the end of the poem we wonder whether these people might be suffering injustices of their own...