The Little Black Boy In Othello

Consider the representation of racial and/or national identities in the work of at least two writers studied in this module. This essay will consider the representation of Othello as a black male in Shakespeare’s play‘Othello’. Othello’s racial identity is not explicitly confirmed within the play, and in contemporary society there is still racial ambiguityregarding Othello’s race. For the purposes of this essay, Othello will be represented as a black man due to textual evidence that supports this view. This essay will also consider the racial representation of the little black boy in William Blake’s poem of the same name ‘The Little Black Boy’. ‘Othello’, written in 1603 by William Shakespeare, can also be titled ‘Othello, the Moor of Venice’. This brings into question the exact meaning of the word ‘Moor’. The

The little boy wishes for the “cloud” (Blake line 16,18, 23) to lift so that he and the little white English boy will be able to hear the voice of God. Blake uses the metaphor of the cloud to represent skin colour and the racism against black people; the little black boy states that, “when I from black and he from white cloud free” (Blake line 23), he is really wishing for the ‘cloud’ of having different skin colours to free them in order for God to speak to and love both he and the little white English boy equally, once the little white English boy has been shaded from the damaging, punishing rays of God’s light. The view of Adler is that “The idea of bodies and clouds obstructing the light from the soul appears in both Plato and Dante” (Adler 412), which is evidence of Enlightenment in terms of faith being timeless and universal, therefore extremely relevant in times of crisis such as the slave trade and