William Blake 's Little Black Boy

“The Chimney Sweeper” (128): This version of the Chimney Sweeper is very upfront and saddening. The version that is presented in the songs of innocence is much more of a calm town and is not as straightforward, while this version is very short and to the point. In this version its very deep as the narrator basically just calls out the parents/church for doing these horrible things to the children. I really love all three stanzas of this poem because they all have a really deep meaning and Blake transitions through them very well. Reading this poem over and over I don’t know what to make of it other than it is an absolute horrible situation. I think it can be tied in to

As time continues, the boy struggles with what to make of himself and his future. His musical aspirations begin to hold more weight in his decisions, but are still rather questionable. Whenever he seems to be making the steps to pave his future, he seems to continuously be redirected from his intended path. His inability to fully strive for a profession can be directly related to his inability to choose how he wants to be viewed, or rather who he wants to be viewed as, by society; he lacks the confidence to potentially make the “wrong decision.” The narrator becomes increasingly likely to make a career of music, and is greatly inspired by spirituals he hears at a church service. As he leaves to “settle down to work” (Johnson 133) , he witnesses a gruesome and cruel scene. A black man was to be hanged in town, but instead a white mob burns the black man alive. The narrator is terrified and scarred, committing to live his life as a white man. Shame is what the young boy now feels, for whether he lives as a white man, he is indeed a black man. Shame is responsible for the choice he made, because he wished not to be “identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals" (Johnson 139).

In William Blake’s “The Little Black Boy” and Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano presents the ideals that contributed to abolitionist cause during the 18th and 19th century in England. Both literary works present notions that deal with identity of man as well as further examination on Christianity which was deemed as an hypocrisy of slavery.

Before watching your presentation, I only knew the basics regarding William Blake. There are various interesting things that you mentioned that I did not know about. For example, you mentioned how he was more commonly known for his art rather than his poems. His art as a whole is really interesting. You mentioned how he took his encounters with the people around him, his brother’s death, and visions and reflected them into his work. One thing from that list that stood out to me the most were his visions. He was able to take his visions and portray them in his paintings even when many people found it difficult to understand the meanings behind it.

The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of

In the poem “Hanging Fire” is written from a point of view of a 14 year old girl who is worried about her life ending to early and seems to be impatient about when her life will start to turn around and go the right away. The first and second line “I am fourteen and my skin has betrayed me” means that this girl believes she is missing out on things because she is not white. Many young children are unaware of their race and how they can become affected by it, but as they get older around the time of puberty they start to notice the difference. In line three, four and five “the boy I cannot live without still l sucks his thumb in secret” since she is fourteen, she is a young woman but in other ways she is still a child. She thinks she is old enough of all in love but the boy that she loves is still childish. She doesn’t seem to see her own childish , but we can because most young girls always want to think by teenage years they are old enough for many

According to Frederick Douglass, “it was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it (p.4).” Frederick Douglass and Toni Morrison literatures examine the stigma of slavery, and the perceptions of its dangers. They illustrate what life was like and the mental as well social impact it had on enslaved African-Americans and their life after gaining freedom. Richard Wright convinces his audience in Black Boy that he was tired of the limitations and outcries in the South “I was not leaving the South to forget the South, but so that some day I might understand it, might come to know what its rigors had done to me, its children (284).” Alice Walker obtains her readers attention by transforming young women into their own characters with a voice using spiritual guidance. In Native Son, Bigger has achieved is lost after being apprehended and brought into captivity, as he transitions back into silence and passivity and begins to recover only in his final confrontation, whereas Douglass in the same prevailing convention, only heals after the regaining of his freedom. Through these literatures, and many others, African-Americans find multiple ways to alleviate and recover from the intensity of undesired bondage and bigotry.

Blake writes, in the poem “When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy” the quote from the poem is saying that all people will eventually be free of their bodies and will go to heaven where we are all equals. During the time the poem was written, some Christians believed that black people would not go to heaven, so Blake is taking a stand on equality here by saying that everyone will go to heaven. In a way Blake makes the black man somewhat of a sacrifice for the white skin that cannot bare the sun’s rays. The poem definitely gives a moral understanding that slavery is bad.

This Poem is about the similarities and differences between the life of a Caucasian person and an African American person. The author, Sharon olds, made this essay to compare and contrast both of them. Sharon olds uses a lot of poetic devices, imagery, and traditional racial stereotypes. Sharon uses a lot of imagery in this poem, she uses most of vividly dark and light as well as animal imagery to contrast her two characters. The whole skin of an animal taken and used shows that the boy represents the inside of an animal, and the speaker represents the outside. Sharon olds utilities a lot of racial stereotypes to show the distance between the characters that exists despite the close ties and connection that they share. In many movies the person

On January 1st, 2017, a gang held an alleyway waiting for people to come through so they and take their money. The alley was very dark. People came through the alley at nights and trashed the alley, cracking windows, leaving cigarettes on the dirty spray-painted ground littered with sharp shards of glass from a broken window. Their leader, Kole Blazer, was there in the rooftops, waiting for someone to come through, when he saw someone betray his gang: Mike Blazer, his brother. Kole was taller than him by only a few inches. He had brown hair, freckles, blue eyes, more muscular than his brother who was always the weaker one, but they were twins and he wanted to keep a secret. His brother betrayed them and now it’s time for payback.

Cullen utilizes imagery throughout the poem, to illuminate the racism African Americans endured and impact racism carries. The speaker in the poem is an eight year old in Baltimore. In the first stanza, Cullen describes the child as “heart-filled, head-filled with glee.” This image portrays the speaker as innocent and joyful. Then the speaker notices a boy staring at him, the speaker believes there’s little difference between them, that the kid “was no whit bigger.” The speaker gets a rude awakening after the boy “poked out his tongue.” A seemingly playful meaningless gesture is met with the boy calling the speaker “N****r.” Cullen contrasts these two experiences because it depicts how racism comes out of nowhere and effects those you wouldn’t expect. The last stanza, the speaker “saw the whole Baltimore. The image of seeing is not just visual, but a metaphor for the loss of innocence where the speaker now is exposed to the hate. Cullen masterfully uses imagery so that readers understand the incredible impact that words have, especially when used for hate.

In the poems, the author uses figurative language and tone to develop the theme in each poem. The boy's experiences show powerful racial interactions between a black and white boy. Although the boys in each of the poems have very different incidents, they leave an impactful

. In the book Black Boy, by Richard Wright, we explore many themes as we read coming of age story from the point of view of an African-American boy in the earlier 20th century. This is a time with a lot of oppression and lifestyles and practices that would seem strange to us today. Wright, however, is not the usual boy with a usual view of the world. Richard Wright uses his oppression to value himself; instead of taking the knowledge handed to him, he challenges ideas of race, justice, and religion and gains wisdom.

Ground-breaking, momentous, and a time of great struggle, the Industrial Revolution was famous for its innovations and infamous for the sobering reality it inflicted upon the standard family. Mid-18th century Britain brought poverty to everyday urban workers. With it, came an increase in child labor like never seen before. In order for a normal family to survive in the urban lifestyle, all members of a family had to work. This included children as young as four years to work as chimney sweepers, miners, and most popularized in 18th century Britain, factory workers. By the year 1800, children under the age of 14 in Britain’s factories accounted for 50% of the labor force (“Industrial Revolution, Child Labor”). Though the number continued to grow, all did not go unaccounted for. Romanticism, an effort opposite the movement, gave recognition to the emotional conflicts overlooked. Romanticism shed light on the daily struggles of the everyday man, woman, and the most neglected up until that period of time, the child. Throughout history, others have written about childhood, but Romantic poets began to question what it meant to be a child. The question, though not answered directly, later became revealed in their works where it exposed their belief systems. The role of the child in British Romantic Poetry represents the early life of Romantic poets, and the qualities they possessed in childhood.

William Blake is one of England’s most famous literary figures. He is remembered and admired for his skill as a painter, engraver, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757 to a poor Hosier’s family living in or around London. Being of a poor family, Blake received little in the way of comfort or education while growing up. Amazingly, he did not attend school for very long and dropped out shortly after learning to read and write so that he could work in his father’s shop. The life of a hosier however was not the right path for Blake as he exhibited early on a skill for reading and drawing. Blake’s skill for reading can be seen in his understanding for and use of works such as the Bible and Greek classic literature.