The Little Black Boy

The superficial meaning of Blake’s poem, “The Little Black Boy”, is that the discriminated black boy, in the dominant white society that instituted slavery, can not play with the white children together, but through mother’s teaching gets the vision of equality and love in the future world and so overcomes the inequality in the real world. However, “’The little black boy’ no doubt grew out of the literature of protest against the slave trade to which many poets contributed until British trade in slaves was abolished in 1810 and slavery itself in 1833.” (Nurmi 59) Therefore, the materials of this poem already have a tendency to critique the slavery society. William Blake’s poem “The Little Black Boy” exposes the logical errors that are fundamental to slavery society. These errors can be seen through the boy’s separation of body and soul, the mother’s contradictory teachings about the black body, and the boy’s confusion about the conditions of love. Blake's treatment of the little black boy's perspective on Christianity and salvation may well be ironic, forming the basis for a more savage attack on religious and social hypocrisy

At first, through the boy’s saying before mother’s teaching, we can know he comes up close to the ‘experience’ world. The boy’s concern with the English child suggests that he has been exposed to white culture and that probably, given the vast transport of blacks to England and America, he has been sent to England. He has lived among the white children while being neglected and discriminated by them. Through the expression, ‘I am black, but O! my soul is white’, we can see the boy unknowingly has a racial prejudice and Christian recognition that a soul is superior to a body. Dr. Constantine Cavarnos states in his book from p. 154 to p. 187 that “the rational soul of man has supernatural, infinite aspiration and the mastery of the soul over the body is proved by the obedience of the body. Therefore, a soul must be immortal.” The boy feels physically inferior to his white counterpart and insists that though his exterior is black, inside his soul is as white (pure) as the angelic-looking English child. Christian promises that God the Father will pass just, equal, loving judgment on the soul after the death of the body. So, what about before the death of the body in real world? Should the boy live without any hope in the real world before his death? However, Blake doesn’t agree with the difference and separation between a soul and a body. In another of Blake’s poems, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, Blake offers an alternative relation between a soul and a body: “Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses.” (plate4) Like this, He denies the separation between a soul and body. The boy’s thought is nothing more than seeking consolation in a religious saying. Blake wants to criticize that the religious message cannot be the effective solution for the problem about the inequal society and slavery.

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        Secondly, the mother teaches the boy underneath a tree. She says to the boy that black body is the evidence which God loves them more than the white, but she doesn’t have respect for her black body and presents it as only ‘a cloud’ which will vanish soon or ‘a shady grove’ which they will come out from soon.  notes that the "blackness has the providential aspect of a shady grove, and is therefore both trial and comfort. The God of Innocence, when his love has been fully endured, will call mother and child out of their bodies, out from ...

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