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In this line ‘mark’ is used in the sense of seeing and also marked by experience, setting up the wordplay and repetition for the next line, where ‘Marks’ reappears as a noun, a device known as antanaclasis. The word ‘every’ in line three is repeated three times in the next stanza. Blake is skilled in techniques like these; a careful craftsman.

The overall picture is of seething suffering humanity; a sea of faces.

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What is this?

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Blake creates the impression that he is wandering through London, observing life in this bustling, frightening city. It also suggests a person who may be aimless, but is taking time to think about what he sees. It prepares the reader for the significant — and harrowing — comments that will follow.

The idea of wandering and observing a city was typified a few decades later by the Parisian flaneur, a leisured gentleman who meandered through streets watching and commenting. This observer, however, sees not polite society but suffering and poverty.

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Occult and hidden knowledge of the mind, of spirituality and more has been studied. This may include the teachings of religious leaders and of secret societies who seek to affect society and politics- Akala has absorbed these teachings through his auto-didactic studies. This could be where Akala has gained his wealth of knowledge from.

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Channeling, or even a form of divine inspiration, is suggested here. Akala appears to be able to transmit this obscure and perhaps occult (hidden) knowledge; the word radiate conveys a sense of enlightenment or Bodhisattva.

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A confident assertion in the style of sports fans across the globe. It is, unfortunately, not quite true. Leeds United have, however, been the greatest in the land, and will be again.

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Britain’s arms industry is amongst the largest in the world. Government backed companies such as BAE, who often have prominent politicians and royals representing them as they sell weapons to dictatorships and repressive regimes , make billions of pounds a year.

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The beginning. The setting of the stage. Where we meet the Birling family and this secular morality play begins.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047119/)

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The ideas of the dead revolutionaries mentioned earlier will live on, even though the men themselves have died for their beliefs. The line ‘ideas are bulletproof’ is also a reference to the final scenes of ‘V for Vendetta’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSLeuTvRPdI

https://twitter.com/akalamusic/status/523926158627581952

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This oxymoronic statement tells us that society wants you to be dumb so they can take advantage of you. We reinforce this ourselves by valuing the idiotic over the real.

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This refers to ‘The Windrush Generation’ who arrived in Britain from the Caribbean in the years after 1948’s British Nationality Act.

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