“The Little Black Boy”

William Blake’s “The Little Black Boy, has been long recognized as a work of “astonishing complexity,” in a dualistic perception of the world. This work tells the story of how he came to know his own identity and to learn about God. I believe that the poem state he was born in the “southern wild” which is Africa. He states that even though his skin is black his soul is as white as an English child. He talks about his mother teaching him about how God lives in the east, who gives light and life to all creations and comfort and joy to men. The black boy passes on his lesson to an English child, explaining that his white skin is likewise a cloud. He vows that when they are both free of their bodies and delighting in the presence of God, he will shade his white friend until he, too, learns to bear the heat of God’s love. Then, the black boy says, he will be like the English boy, and the English boy will love him.

 The black boy internalizes his mother’s lesson and applies it in his relations with the outer world; specifically, Blake shows us what happens when the boy applies it to his relationship with a white child. The results are ambivalent. The boy explains to his white friend that they are equals, but that neither will be truly free until they are released from the constraints of the physical world. He imagines himself shading his friend from the brightness of God’s love until he can become accustomed to it. This statement implies that the black boy is better prepared for heaven than the white boy, perhaps because of the greater burden of his dark skin has posed during earthly life. This is part of the consoling vision with which his mother has prepared him, which allows his suffering to become a source of pride rather than shame. But the boy’s outlook, and his deference to the white boy, may strike the reader as containing a naive blindness to the realities of oppression and racism, and a too-passive acceptance of suffering and injustice. We do not witness the response of the white boy; Blake’s focus in this poem is on the mental state of the black child. But the question remains of whether the child’s outlook is servile and self-demeaning, or exemplifies Christian charity. The poem itself implies that these might amount to the same thing.

The literary theory that this poem applies to this work is Marxist Criticism. Who does its benefit of the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc? This work benefits anyone who reads it. In the past the speaker holds a fast desire of acceptance by the white English child. In today’s society there is no longer the want of desire of acceptance between blacks and whites.