William Blakes The Little Black Boy

An African child compares his outward appearance with a white child's, but asserts
that his soul is white. He then recounts his mother's teaching. She taught him to think
of heaven where God gives comfort and joy. Life is about learning to accept love.
Bodies are only like clouds which will disappear once people have learned to bear the
beams of love'. Then God will call individuals to himself, where they will rejoice like
innocent lambs.
The boy then turns to address a white boy. When they are both in heaven, he will
shade his companion from the heat of God's love until the child can bear to be at God's
knee. Then the black child will stroke the white child's hair. He will be like the white
child then and so the white boy will love him.
This is, among other things, an attack by Blake on contemporary attitudes to race and
slavery. (See Religious / philosophical background > Blake's religious world >
Dissenting attitudes to Locke.) Many at the time believed that non-white races were
inferior and used this to justify slavery. Here Blake deals with a contemporary social
evil but also shows how ways of thinking can reinforce a person's subjection to evil.
Blake attacks the eighteenth century belief in racial inferiority by asserting the
insubstantial, ephemeral nature of the body. He believed that bodies were simply
vapors masking the true self.
By stressing the common human nature shared by the boys, and their equality before
God, Blake is also presenting black and white as contraries rather than oppositions in
human nature. This, too, undermines the philosophy used to justify slavery.
The existing status quo
The tone and approach of the young speaker, however, suggests an uncomplaining
acceptance of the injustice behind this judgment of inferiority. He has been taught not
to protest but to think of future happiness with God. He is offered future joy to
persuade him to accept present injustice. Furthermore, the child accepts that he will
have to become like the white boy in order to be loved by him. Whiteness sets the
standard. To be loved is to accept the white boy's terms.
Here, Blake is exposing the limitations of innocence. Lacking awareness, the innocence
of the black boy makes him vulnerable to injustice and exploitation.
Subversive imagery
When Blake employs the imagery of God's love and sunbeams, so that accepting love
means becoming sunburnt', he turns the tables on his contemporaries. According to
Blake, the black boy has evidently borne more sun than the white child. He has
therefore been more receptive to the beams of God's love. Similarly, in heaven, it is the
black boy who is the noble, loving and generous one, seeing himself as protecting the
white boy until he can bear the heat.
Blake here seems to be satirizing the approach of contemporary Christianity, as well as
attacking notions of white superiority.
Imagery and symbolism
Blake was concerned to express what he believed was his true understanding of
Christianity. He was writing for a public that, for the most part, was Christian and
shared Blake's familiarity with the Bible. Thus, he used Christian images that he knew
his readers would recognize, but in ways which questioned how the image was
commonly understood. Here, he uses several images and refers to related biblical ideas.
Tree suggests the Tree of knowledge of good and evil in Paradise, the Garden of Eden.
Adam and Eve were told by God not to eat the fruit of this tree. However, Eve was
tempted by the devil in the guise of a serpent, so she ate some and then gave it to Adam.
(See Genesis 3) As a result, they fell from innocence, became aware of their nakedness
and developed shame about it. They were cast out of Eden.
Blake locates this tree' as being within the human mind in his Songs of Experience.
Since the boy learns his lesson about love and endurance under the tree, it suggests its
link with fallen versions of reality. The lesson the boy is given may be reassuring but it
is a lesson fallen human beings have developed to keep people in control. When it is
accepted by the naively innocent, it is therefore perpetuated.
East the direction of the rising sun, and in Christianity associated with the
resurrection of Christ and so with eternal life.
Black body/sunburnt face This reference would remind Blake's readers of the Old
Testament poem the Song of Songs, where the bride, whose face is black and sunburnt,
is considered beautiful. (Song of Songs 1:6). The Song of Songs (sometimes called The
Song of Solomon) is an unashamedly erotic poem. It is seen by the Church as an image
of the spiritual love-relationship:
Between Christ and the soul
Between Christ and the Church
Between God and the Virgin Mary.
In medieval literature, it is used as an image for sexual encounter / sexual relationship.
This image underlines the essential equality of the black boy as one who is loved by
God. Since the Song of Songs is a poem, which is interpreted in ways far removed from
its original purpose, referencing it stresses Blake's idea that what humans tell
themselves can differ from the reality.
Lambs The lamb image implies innocence, meekness and the figure of Christ. Jesus is
portrayed as meek like a lamb before his accusers in 1 Peter 1:19. He is called the
Lamb of God' who takes away the sins of the world in John 1:29 and is identified as a
sacrificial lamb in 1 Corinthians 5:7. The context and connotations are very different
from the use here. This lamb is not a soft, woolly animal but a sacrificial victim. He is
associated with human violence and treachery, with the consequences of evil. In the
light of this, we can see that there are other dimensions to being like lambs' of which
the boy is unaware, even though his actions make him a sacrificial figure.
Golden tent The image of a golden tent perhaps conjures up for Blake's readers the
golden tent of a monarch celebrating victory after a chivalric tournament. In the Old
Testament, God's presence was said to inhabit a tent or tabernacle Exodus 40:34-35
[Child] - Underlying the poem, though the term is not used, is the fact that the speaker
is a child. All Blake's associations with the image of the child are therefore in the
background of the poem and affect our understanding of it.
At one level, the child is an image of innocence and gentleness. In the Gospels, Jesus
says that the kingdom of God belongs to those who become like little children in their
innocence and humility. However, the Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth and childhood
include experience of human violence and so emphasize the vulnerability of the child:
He is acclaimed by the prophet [3Simeon as one who will bring about the fall and rise
of many.
Then his parents become refugees to escape King Herod's attempts to kill Jesus by
ordering the slaughter of all boys under two (see Matthew 2:1618).
Like the lamb, the child is gentle and innocent but, because of this, also vulnerable and
subject to human cruelty. The boy in this poem is in just this situation.