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| The Little Black Boy, by William Blake
Poem Interpretation Important vocabulary southern wild - Africa, where the boy came from O! my soul is white - Elevation of the soul White as an angel - angels are white creatures; white is the colour of death bereav'd of light - prevented from light; oposes to white taught, kissed, took, began - all the verbs show that his mother belongs to the past there God does live - God is connected with the sun gives his heat away - God gives away one of his gifts with no purpose flowers, trees, beasts, men - they all are God's creations to bear - the beams are not comfortable, not envolving And these black bodies and this sunburnt face is but a cloud, and like a shady grove - the body prevents the soul from reaching out to God, man can't reach his creator the cloud will vanish - the material part is destroyed golden tent - tabernacles of the Lord when I from black and he from white cloud free - when we are souls lambs - symbol of purity and innocence I'll shade him from the heat - the black boy will still be serving the white boy he will then love me - he's going to be loved by the white boy because he will resemble him Interpretation Our body is like a shell that prevents the soul to come out in God's direction. The physical power of us will disappear. The black boy is in a serving position, he serves the white boy - the black boy has suffered more during his life time, so he doesn't need a shade, doesn't need to be protected. - He's more prepared to face God than the white boy. He'll be like the white boy and he will love him. They are not equal before God. Blake thought that each creature,each tree, each stone, each one of us is a portion from the divine. William Blake believes in the God of the Old Testament: the God that punishes, the one that imposes on men, the one that is jealous of his creation. The God of love, of gooness and forgiveness is represented by Christ. We can see this contradiction in his poems. For Blake, God is full of energy and strenght. Songs of Innocence/Songs of Experience: the state of innocence is the state of when we are born. We are later submerged in experience. The great task of man is to release himself from this experience. For Blake, killing someone is not a sin itself; the sin is in preventing someone else from his life. The boy talks about the place where he comes from. Blake presents the figure of the English white boy. The Black boy talks about his mother in past time, so we assume that she is dead or left behind. Angels are presented as being white, like the information given by the Church. God is connected with the sun. In this poem, seems that God prevented black people from light. Very important: God is not envolving, people have to bear him. Carla Diana Cardoso, for Study of Texts - English, Translation course at ISLA Copyright by Didi Cardoso. This file is the author's own work. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research. You may not reproduce it in any way without written permission from the author. |
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