Innocence in William Blake's "The Little Black Boy"

Innocence in William Blake's "The Little Black Boy"

This poem, published in Songs of Innocence, is the voice of a black child and how he came to know himself and God. The poem is built upon imagery of lightness and darkness and you can see this in the first stanza.

My mother bore me in the southern wild, (1)

And I am black, but O! my soul is white. (2)

White as an angel is the English child: (3)

But I am black as if bereav'd of light. (4)

There is contrast between the black boy's skin and his believing that his soul is white, proving his problem of not being able to understand what is actually the truth, or in other words, innocence. He has yet been exposed the harsh realities of the world. 

His mother symbolizes the selfless love that the young child longs for, as well as acceptance. Darkness comes into play yet again.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear (17)

The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice (18)

Saying "come out from the grove my love & care, (19)

And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice." (20)

She tells the boy that their dark skin is nothing but a temporary appearance that means nothing later on in the eternal life. Skin is only an earthly feature in which God does not care about, according to the mother. They will all be equals once they reach heaven.

The black boy uses his mother's words and goes on to speak to the white boy about the situation at hand. The black boy explains to the white friend that they are one in the same, and neither of them will be free until they are released from the limitations of the physical world. "When I from black and he from white cloud free,(23) And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:(24). 

He goes on to say that he will shade his friend from the heat until he can take it himself, which implies that his dark skin has prepared him for heaven better than the white boy. 

Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear. (25)

To lean in joy upon our fathers knee (26)

And then Ill stand and stroke his silver hair. (27)

And be like him and he will then love me. (28)

This last stanza shows the black boys' admiration and regard for the white friend. To the reader who doesn't have innocence like the black child does, it is easy to see that he seems oblivious or naive to the realities of oppression and racism (or again; innocence). In the image at the top of the page, the black boy is behind the white boy who is in front of God, which sort of shows the reader that Blake was expressing the idea that the whites come first. The black boy drives to be like the white boy because he thinks it is the only way God will love him. Although the reader knows that this is not true, we can see that the black boy does not. We can only hope that when he one day figures it all out he shows the same kind of compassion and concern for his white friend and all other races. This complicated matter isn't for children to think about, but Blake gives the reader a look at what it might look like.

For further info on the poem and how critics have viewed it from 1924 through 1995, visit http://www.english.uga.edu/wblake/SONGS/9/9kozlows.bib.html