Blake!

[cassettekid]

Is anyone else doing Blake for the final exam?
I think I have a pretty good grasp on nearly all the poems except for Little Black Boy!
That poem always seems to stump me..
So I figured I may as well start a discussion on Blake/LBB/any of his other poems

[binders]

slavery? christian ideals vs. the reality of how they lived? and how a benevolent God looks on this? cf. Job?

[cassettekid]

Thanks a lot for your suggestions!

I've been focusing on the ideas of slavery and the hypocrisy of Christianity/institutionalised religion but whenever I try to write on the poem my ideas seem to come across as very simplistic..

With your idea of God's reaction -where would you say that's discussed in the poem? I haven't thought about that idea in much detail!

[binders]

yeah i don't know, i was just making stuff up lol. hadn't read it before
Don't pay attention to this!

i spose that if the black boy is helping the white bear god's heat (love) when they both reach god's presence, then he's saying that white people have moved away from God. you could take that as secularism, the enlightenment and reason, theology vs. faith, simple inhumanity to other men (eg, slavery) etc.
He loves his white children, but not his black ones apparently.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice,
…
And thus I say to little English boy,
...
I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our father's knee;



As for God's reaction to this, the status of black people at the time is closer to that of early christians; persecuted. So God is letting his children suffer and persecute each other. I think this indifferent/non-benevolent God is present in the book of Job. The boy's belief in a benevolent God might seem naïve, but there's scriptural, if not rational, basis for thinking that the God can love and cause to suffer.

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, (God's hair)
And be like him, and he will then love me.

[EvangelionZeta]

I always found Blake more compelling as a poet of childhood/adulthood within the human condition (hence Songs of Innocence/Songs of Experience...), and the necessary transition from purity to corruption within the human condition, especially with poems like The Sick Rose etc. - maybe that's just me though.

[cassettekid]

 

As for God's reaction to this, the status of black people at the time is closer to that of early christians; persecuted. So God is letting his children suffer and persecute each other. I think this indifferent/non-benevolent God is present in the book of Job. The boy's belief in a benevolent God might seem naïve, but there's scriptural, if not rational, basis for thinking that the God can love and cause to suffer.

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, (God's hair)
And be like him, and he will then love me.

I've never thought of it as stroking God's hair. That's an interesting way of interpreting it.. I always considered the silver hair to be that of the white boy, therefore he still remains naive yet accepting of his oppression/slavery.
 
And no I definitely agree with you EvangelionZeta. Through most of my work on Blake I've been focusing on the development from innocence to experience (along with the consequences that occur from either state of being) but I found I always seem to refer back to the same poems. It got me a bit worried about the end of year exam so I've been trying to focus on some of the poems I haven't really worked with fully.. For some reason I find LBB somewhat ambiguous/difficult in comparison to all Blake's other poems. 

Just out of curiosity, what poems do you guys think may be on the exam this year?

[binders]

It could be the boy's hair. I'm thought it was God's hair since it's silver, which usually equates with age.  Any idea why the white boy would have silver hair? is silver hair an angelic attribute in Blake?
I'm prolly wrong about whose hair, although perhaps there's some deliberate ambiguity?

EDIT: I'm definitely wrong about the hair. googling an early printing of SoI, blake's depiction has the boy and God with white (silver) hair, and the black boy touching the other boy's hair.
http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=songsie.b.illbk.09&java=yes