A critical appreciation of Blake’s “The Little Black Boy”.
...atural love that becomes the poem’s objective. She shows a genuine concern for her son’s self-esteem, as well as a strong desire that he understand and know the comfort God has to offer. She persuades him that life on earth is merely preparation for what God has to offer after life; the rewards of Heaven. This therefore implies that their black skin is simply a temporary appearance. Their skin becomes irrelevant from heaven’s perspective. The body and the soul, black and white, and earth and heaven are all aligned in order to show what the Christian faith promises, that any pain and suffering experienced here on earth will be compensated for in the afterlife. The boy then internalises his mother’s lesson and applies it specifically to his relationship with a little white child. The boy explains to the white child how they are equals, however neither of them are actually free until they have passed on from the physical world. He imagines himself shading the other child from the brightness of God’s love until he can become used to it. This therefore implies that the black child has been better prepared for heaven than the white, this is perhaps because of the greater ‘burden’ his dark skin has posed during earthly life. This vision with which his mother has shared with h...