“The Little Black Boy” (Songs of Innocence) and “The Chimney Sweeper” (Songs of Experience)

In these poems religiousness is sought in a particular way in which prejudice against skin color is put in the spot. The white boy is considered to be the angel, the enlighten one, and everything that is clear, clean and white is taken as good and blessed while the opposite happens related to the black boy who is described as a learner of religiousness but not as good as the white boy. He, the black boy, is the slave, the sinner and according to the poems the one who has to suffer more in order to get to heaven. In both poems the author refers to the color white as light, warmness and the one who has white skin is the one who has the light soul, the pure soul. Since God gives light and warmth (as he lives in the Sun) the blessed one would be the white boy while the black boy would be left aside by God until he reach the same color, white as an angel, of purity itself. Although there is this path for the black boy to go in order to become better and a good soul he thinks, and wonders, and asks his mother about this difference, while his mother pats him and comforts him saying that this is the way it is and God will redeem them one day but for now they are hidden under a shade or a cloud and are not able to get this Sun of God upon their skin. As in the passage the mother says:

“(…) 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.

For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear,

the cloud will vanish (…)”

The mother was then affirming they would one day become white and good souls out of this shade of the black skin.

In both poems they are waiting to be redeemed after death because in this life they should work and pray for the light to come and just then they would be free as the white were.

Another possibility of interpretation of the color black in the skin of the workers and slaves is that since God releases the light and warmth from the Sun as love, He would have loved the black people so much and released so much light upon them until these got burnt from the sunlight of God, although all the sufferings that they went through during their lives would not be justified by love but hate.

So the suffering of the black people is justified because they are still under the shade and after death they will be able to have their souls as white as the ones from the angels because they will have proven they had suffered enough to be redeemed from their sins and just then they would not need to envy white boys and feel as equals.

Concluding, these poems are full of criticism about the way religion divides the black and white values and the natural way in which these values are transmitted to the poor souls living on Earth now and waiting to be happy just after death believing it is their faults having the color marks they have and praying to, one day, be freed to be happy and pure in the light of this God of theirs.

Blake, Willian. (1789) Songs of Innocence and (1794)Songs of Experience