‘The night was dark, no father was there / the child was wet with dew / the mire was deep, and the child did weep / and away the vapour flew.’
These lines of William Blake in ‘The Little Boy Lost’ from Songs of Innocence tell of a significant moment of maturing which is common to human experience.
The ‘vapour’ here is that essence of naivety and childhood ignorance which inevitably evaporates at the disturbing realisation that the father is not the perfect protector he was once thought to be. It was blissfully comfortable to live in the cloud of that vapour, but it kept the child from growing up. Without it, the child sees the reality of his situation, finding himself in a strange darkness where it is difficult to walk, at least at first. These lines of Blake’s befit the experience of Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, the 26-year-old protagonist of Harper Lee’s recently released second novel, Go Set A Watchman.
