Slavery In William Blake's The Little Black Boy

In 1789, William Blake wrote a poem The Little Black Boy which is included in Songs of Innocence. English poet and painter was born on November 1757. From early childhood, Blake tends to have the spiritual visions which shall explain the mystical threat engaged in his poems. At four, he saw God, who “put his head to the window” and at nine, he saw a tree filled with angels. Despite the fact that his parents tried to discourage him from believing in such visions, they detected his alterity and decided not to force him to attend to conventional school. In effect, he learned to read and write at home. Blake's artistic ability became evident in his youth and about the age of ten he was sent to drawing school owing to the expression of a strong

Furthermore, the ideas of the abolition of slavery were still young. From the 17th century into the 19th century the problem of slavery had many opportunities to develop, owing to transportation of colonists whose poverty left no other alternative than to work under forced labour conditions. Ship owners from the Britain transported enslaved West Africans to the New World to be sold into slavery labour. Admittedly, the English parliament prohibited the practice of passing the Slave Trade Act in 1807, however, this problem has still been concerning the Africans, but in another form. The poem is in heroic quatrains, which are stanzas of pentameter lines rhyming ABAB. The form is a variation on the ballad stanza, and the slightly longer lines are well suited to the pedagogical tone of this

Blake uses the sun as a metaphor for God and His Kingdom, however, the reference to the sun not only concerning the religious metaphor, but the fact that "rising" means “change”. Furthermore, the running metaphor of the sun, which is incarnated in the phrases "black bodies" and a "sunburnt face" refers to the suffering of black people who seems to be closer to God. Blake submits the hypothesis that the English boy's pale skin is not used to the heat (the sign of God's love), which denotes the distance of the English from God as a result of their treatment of the black people. Moreover, his loving mother explains him the importance of God living in the East, that “gives his light, and gives his heat away, and flowers and trees and beasts and men receive, comfort in morning joy in the noonday” and teaches to bear the heat of God’s