I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear...

Samar Nattagh

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.

In the last stanza of Blake’s “The Little Black Boy”, the little black boy (the speaker) talks about protecting the little white boy once they are in heaven from the “heat till he can bear”, suggesting that the burden of being black has better prepared him to “bear... our father”. The cruelties of the little black boy’s life have made him strong enough to take in and understand God’s love more easily than the white boy can. But the little black boy seems too willing to go along with this idea of redemption in the afterlife, dismissing almost completely the misery he experienced in his life on earth. Afterlife and being able to “stroke [God’s] silver hair” does not negate a lifetime of pain. The little black boy ultimately wants to “be like [God]” and wants God to then love him. In Blake’s “The Divine Image”, he introduces the idea of God being a reflection of the perfection of human qualities, rather than humans being imperfect reflections of God. Blake also had said, “All deities reside in the human breast”. Why, then, does the little black boy strive to be like God if God is already in him? Perhaps, he has no choice; the only way he knows to deal with his suffering is to follow his mother’s advice and take solace in God’s “heat” and “beams of love”. This is better than having no hope. But maybe religion is giving him a false sense of hope and contentment. Gaining God’s love in the afterlife does not solve the problem of injustice in the present life. The little black boy already is like God and already has God’s love but he does not put it to use. If only he realized this, he could use that reflection of God and his love to try to better his situation. If God exists in us and he is the perfection of our qualities, then the little black boy need only self-reflect to gain insight into his condition. Only then can that condition improve.