“The Little Black Boy” by: William Blake
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
- The writer identifies the tension between the binaries.
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav’d of light.
- In this stanza we see cultural bias, that light/white is a privileged term since it is tied to God and shade/black are non-privileged
My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.
Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
- Only pure/lighted souls have learnt God’s love while those of the opposite will not
For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.
Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy;
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:
I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.
- Can be interpreted that the little black boy wishes to be like the little white boy than be saved
Analyzing this poem with Deconstructionism, we are presented with a few binaries such as: black/white, light/shade and saved/unsaved. This text also contradicts itself, in deconstructionism the only assumption you can make is that the text itself is unreliable. At the beginning of the text it talks about how light/white will be saved but, towards the end talks about how the little black boy will save the white little boy; the roles are reversed. This contradiction creates new insights such as: black and white are equal, being saved isn’t the ultimate goal and even if white is usually seen as superior, there can’t be light without dark. Essential saying that dark is a necessary concept, since without dark light cannot be seen. This poem also raises awareness about race, this text was written by William Blake in 1789 when the issue of racism and slavery was significant issue. This also arose the question that, if white was truly superior to black during that time in history?
Marxist Literary Theory 