IMPORTANCE OF THE POEM FOR THE POET’S LIFE

 

But, what was the importance for Blake’s life?

 

We have to know that William Blake, what he wants to transmit to the reader is the human being.

This poem has a completely specific context; it was the time in which Blake was thinking about slavery.

He tries to express his feelings and tries to influence people through his poems. For instance, through “The little black boy”, he tries to make people conscious about the problem of slavery, racism and inequality.

Blake was telling the people things that they did not want to listen. He talked to the society about problems that nobody wanted to pay attention. This was the British society of the time (London). His works (his songs) were like protests.

He was a city person. He was seeing the country; he wasn’t ignorant about those people that came to the city from the countryside because they couldn’t even nor eat.

And that was what he wanted to express to the people that were ignorant to these kinds of things.

 

Reading this, we maybe could be very surprised and disappointed, but pay attention to our current society. There are still people like in the society of the 18^th century, although it could be incredible.

We are living in the same society, where a lot of people die and nobody cares. Even there are also contemporary “slaves”, although we may have different attitude in front of the same term.

 

But, although William Blake could seem a man who believes in liberty and equality in society and between the sexes, some critics, as S. Foster Damon, calls the poem "primarily moralistic," and he also asserts that its final paragraph suggests that Blake did not believe in the equality of the races.