Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Songs of Innocence - The Little Black Boy
William Blake's poem The Little Black boy upholds the reoccurring concept in which he believes in a future society, usually a heavenly one where inequalities are resolved. The poem has a great sense of hopefulness and faith in regard to the little black boy envisioning a heaven where he is equal to the English boy when they are both in heaven together. However, even though the little boy has accepted God, the poem conveys that the little black boy lacks "light," the holy "light," or redemption - based on the color of his skin. This also ties back to abolition and slavery; the superiority of whites - which Blake dissolves in his writings; maintaining the idea that we will all be the same in the end - that God gives his "light" and his love to all things, both men and nature.
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I agree with your analysis of the poem. I think lines 11 & 12 tie in the idea of nature as being equal in God's eyes, which encompasses all humans alike: "And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive Comfort in the morning joy in the noon day." I do agree that the conclusion of the poem is that we will all be the same in the end which is why everyone can take part in receiving God's light from the rising sun. The image present with the rising sun, the beams of love in line 14, and the rejoicing in line 20 gives the idea not of a solemn devastation of inequality but a hopefulness for a future that includes equality at least in God's eyes.
ReplyDeleteVery true, but I also want to add that the poem displays the concept of the individual being the same not by the appearance of the individual that connects with god, it’s the soul over the person that displays the true light of what makes the human. However, there is a desire in the poem that demonstrates the black child’s soul being more associated with the English, in which sort of shows the defiance of the time of the idea of white being pure and black is evil.
ReplyDeleteAll amazing comments! I'm very interested in how the two perspectives represented in the poem might impact you reading of it's hopefulness. The first two stanzas are spoken by the boy, then his mother speaks for three stanzas, and then he speaks for the final two stanzas. In the last two stanzas, the little boy applies his mother's lesson to his relationship with the white boy (which might be read as an allegory for the relationship between African people and the British or Europeans). I'm curious what you think about the boy's understanding of what his mother has said: does he understand the cloud in the same way as she does? What is the function of the cloud/skin analogy in the boy's speech at the end of the poem? What does it imply about the future?
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