“The Little Black Boy” is a story of a “southern wild” born black child, who vouches for God and for the whiteness of his soul. At the central of the above picture, the sunlight resembles the image of God in the third stanza of the poetry. The boy, through the stories of his mother, believes that heat and warmth stem from the sunlight of God; thus, every human beings deserves to receive them despite the difference in the colors of their skin. However, the more interesting aspect of the pictures lies in how the surrounding cloud prevents the light from reaching the earth. At the end of the fourth stanza, William Blake compares cloud as “black bodies” and “sun burnt faces”. This analogy is intriguing, for if cloud blocks sunlight away from earth, then black perhaps is that cloud that kept God and happiness away from color-skinned people. Even though the boy was born with evident awareness that
“White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereaved of light”
, his mother taught him to believe in the day when humans are black and white “cloud free”, they will rejoice. Overall, “The Little Black Boy” may first appear as William Blake’s implement to criticize racial inequality of the 18th century society. Nonetheless in using the boy’s innocent perspective, the author posted his sanguine desire for a future of empathy between people from different colors, as he clearly stated in the end – “And be like him and he will then love me.”