I visited the Museum of Modern Art on October 9^th. It was a very rainy day, but the museum was very crowded. I had never been to a museum of this type before; I have never been really interested in “art”. While at the museum I was amazed to see how intricate the works of art were, even though I didn’t always understand what the work was meant to be or meant to explain I admired the work put into them. After walking around confused trying to decide which piece I would like to analyze, I found Hope II by Gustav Klimt. While reading the excerpt next to this painting I was surprised to learn that paintings of pregnant women were considered to be rare. This painting caught my eye immediately and I knew I was going to write about it.

The Austrian painter Gustav Klimt painted Hope II in 1907-08. It is painted from oil, gold, and platinum on canvas. I chose this painting to analyze because it depicted a sad pregnant woman; this made me question why she was sad. As I got a closer look I saw that there seemed to be a skeleton head coming out of her dress. The woman’s breasts are also bare and visible, which I thought was strange, because the woman is not alone. There are three women bowing at the woman’s feet.

Klimt came from Vienna and his works coincided with the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Klimt’s painting had the ideas of sex and death, as depicted by the woman’s bade breast and the skeleton of a baby. Klimt’s title Hope II, helped me understand what this painting is about.

Although I am not certain that my analysis of this painting is correct, this is my take on what Klimt was trying to say. The woman in the painting is an expecting mother who is coming to the end of her pregnancy. I believe she is looking down at her stomach, which seems to have a skeleton baby head in it, hoping that everything goes well with her delivery. The women at her feet are in a kneeling position praying for the same thing. At first I thought this paining symbolized a stillborn baby, but with the title Hope II, I think it has more to do with an up and coming birth. Behind the pregnant woman is a yellowish white figure, which to me looks to be angel wings. To me this is symbolic of the fear that she can also die during childbirth, back then many mothers died during childbirth.

After visiting the museum and analyzing a painting I have a greater liking for art. This paining seemed very simple yet very deep, which is what I liked most. Before I went to the museum I thought of art as just abstract objects that only the painter understood. Now I know that there is not only one analysis of a painting, it’s what you get out of it. Like in Hope II, it could be the idea of a stillborn baby like I originally thought or it can be the idea of hope for a good outcome in childbirth. Works of art just like works of literature are up to the audience to interpret.

This assignment has been tough to do, because it concerns race, slavery, and their very real modern day after-effects. Philip published her poem around 2011.Douglass published his work in 1845. Their discourse and narrative pick at the limitations of the english language. Language and the tongue are fundamental to our human essence. yet english comes out stuttered and foreign in the poem. This is symbolic of the imposition of a foreign language on an enslaved people. There is languish and anguish in their experience, and because they can’t fully express this experience after being robbed of home and freedom, and taken to a foreign land to be slaves, there is languish and anguish in the language. Douglass echoes this many times in his narrative. He describes the men on the way to the Great House Farm. They were singing, but it wasn’t the words they sang that expressed the dehumanization of slavery, it was the emotion in the sound. In fact they didn’t know that they were expressing their degradation and deep emotion. These travelling men experienced a linguistic confusion. Their souls languished in anguish, yet they communicated better than any narrative or poem. I can apply something from my own experience to sort of understand this. A lady I know had just buried her husband of many years. All of a sudden, she uttered a moan or wail that I had never heard before or since. The sound struck me in my gut and I felt the love and loss let loose in that sound.
Philip describes a mother’s tongue being used to bring a child into relationship with its mother. At first the child protests, but the tongue blows in relationship/ancestry/security/connection. Douglass recounts how he did not speak much at all to his mother in the few times he saw her alive. Relationship is broken. Language is broken.
Douglass says, “I have no language to express the high excitement and deep anxiety which was felt among us. We had no voice…A single word from the white man was enough…to sunder forever the dearest friends, kindred and strongest ties known to human beings.” Slavery gave the white man the voice and thus the power. Broca et al continued the legacy.
Truth is suppressed. The tongue is suppressed. The tongue can tell its truth, but at great cost. “To all complaints no matter how unjust, the slave must never answer a word” (page 10 quote). We are told of the slave who was chained, handcuffed and carted away from friends and family for truthfully answering questions about his master’s treatment. Douglass quotes the maxim “a still tongue makes a wise head.” This also ties in with the poem where it says, in the intuitive sense, that the tongue is dumb. This is really a contradiction. Even Philip’s use of multiple choice points to the dichotomy of language. Did she describe a tongue or a penis? Is it all of the above or none of the above? Interestingly, both tongues and penises were cut off during slavery.

The autobiography of Fredrick Douglas and the poem “The Discourse of the logic of language” by M. NourbeSe Philip emphasized on the destruction of human connection through language during slavery. Slave master used language as a tool for oppression. In the poem, Philip talked about how a slave has no mother tongue, no tongue to mother, and therefore became tongue dumb. Slaves were not allow to speak one common language because their masters thought this will breed rebellion. As a result, slaves were mixed with others from different region that could not understand their mother tongue. And also, As mention in Douglas autobiography that slaves were not allow to keep their children before they breathe their tongue into their children. “It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age.”( Douglas,1). These were strategies used by slave master to hinder the human connection between a child and the mother.

In addition, the repetitions in Philip poem suggest that she is trying to use logic to understand the conflict of language during slavery “a mother tongue is not a foreign lan lan, lang, language, anguish, anguish, a foreign anguish.” Similarity, Douglas was trying to understand why a slave was not allowed to learned English the foreign language of his mother tongue. These were the conflict of language they both were trying to understand.

However, these two exceptional writers have broadened our mind of how language was used to break the chain of human connection in the era of slavery.

Having read the autobiography of Fredrick Douglas and being able to reflect on the poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” I made connections throughout the length of the poem. One of the easiest connected trains of though between both the autobiography and the poem in the use of language. Throughout Douglas’ life he had a burning desire to learn more and become more fluent in the English language. In the poem we see how different the English language can be from different perspectives, in this case the perspective of a slave. M. NourbeSe Phillip speaks of father tongues and mother tongues and how languages are learned differently depending on the environment in which you grow up in. In the case of Douglas, he was raised on the plantation and he goes on to explain how certain phrases and sayings held different meanings based upon where you were raised. His example of this is when the select few were asked to run errands to the Big House Plantation they would sing songs that were almost gibberish to those outside the slaves who worked on the plantation. The poem then goes on to explain how the so called “mother tongue” is your native tongue and your “father tongue” is a foreign language to you. The connection I made to Fredrick Douglas’ life narrative was that both his mother tongue and father tongue were English, and that to many at that time the English language was both a native and foreign tongue. Much in the way the slave’s children were separated at birth with the intention to restrict human connection to a minimum. Another possible reason that was done was to prevent the children from ever learning the English language to a point where they could communicate and rebel. Douglas however contradicts this pattern as he does everything in his power to continuously learn more and further his knowledge of the language, overcoming the barriers of not having a diluted base-level understanding of the English language. Just as explained in the poem the issue that Douglas had initially is that his native language was unfortunately also a foreign language because there was no one that he lived with that knew the language well enough to teach him, or those that knew enough to teach were not allowed to by separation or just because they were white and did not have the desire to teach. Luckily for Douglas his mistress in Baltimore was willing to teach him English and did until his master forbid it eventually. The poem puts into words the difficulties explained by Douglas in learning the English language in how it was his native language and was raised speaking a lesser diction of it than most, but at the same time a foreign language because of the difficulties he had to overcome in order to gain the knowledge he used to write his own story.

In both “Discourse on the Logic of Language” by M. NourbeSe Phillip and “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass a common theme is language, words, and the hardship they caused for the African American Community. Although it affected both in different ways, their lives were changed by language and by the oppression that the African American community has faced.

Both authors showed the significance of words and how powerful they can be. In the poem, Phillip goes from one word to another by contorting the word a little to make the original word a completely new one. This dramatically emphasizes the power of not only the last word but the first word also. On example is when she turns the word land into language, and then from language into anguish. Just looking at these words they don’t appear to have any real connection, but she creates one with her poetry. In Douglass’ narrative he also puts an emphasis on words by explaining what a threat an educated black man was to the white slave owners. Slaves were not allowed to learn because if they had any sort of knowledge they would be more likely to escape. To prevent this, slave owners refused to even teach their slaves the alphabet. But, since Douglass was educated, a little by Mrs. Auld, and a little by the children from the town, he had the power to do what the slave owners feared.

Although Douglass eventually was able to free himself from the oppression of slavery, he was not always this fortunate. For the beginning years of his life he had no knowledge of language at all. He also had no one to teach him. He was not certain of who his father was, and he barely had any connection with his mother. In this way he is similar to Phillip because she too was without a mother. She speaks of being “tongue dumb” since she has no mother, or no “mother to tongue.” Her and Douglass were both missing this connection, but it affected them both in different ways. Her lack of a mother figure made her feel inferior, and “tongue dumb,” where as Douglass’ connection with his mom barely effected him. When the news that he lost his mother reached him, he felt no more than what he would have over the loss of a stranger.

Another connection I found, was the connection both stories made with a bigger picture. In Douglass’ narrative, although it was a biography, he continuously talks about the whole of the slave population and what the hardships they faced. In the poem, she talks about herself and her mother and father tongue, and then connects this with the anatomy of the tongue itself. It was interesting in both accounts how they connected their own stories to something greater than themselves.

Douglass’ narrative of his life through slavery, and Phillip’s poem on the impact of language both were extremely eye opening. Douglass’ account, being a first hand experience of the impact slavery, showed what the slaves had to endure it. Phillip’s poem left me wondering how extreme of an impact language has on everyones lives. Both similar in the emphasis they put on language, and how it changed their lives.

The dominant theme of both “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” by Frederick Douglass and “Discourse on the Logic of Language” by M. NourbeSe Philip deals with the struggles of African Americans and their oppression. Though Frederick Douglass tells his story of the horror of being a slave, Philip speaks on the more general obstacles and oppression faced by African Americans throughout history and today.

NourbeSe Philip uses repetition to convey important ideas and messages in her poem. She explains that she has “no mother tongue”. To compare this to Frederick Douglass’ story, Douglass has no mother. His mother is a slave on a different plantation and can only visit at night when she travels alone through the dark woods. Though she made this valiant and courageous effort to visit her son as much as she could, Frederick Douglass was too young and the contact between the two was too few and far between to recognize her has a mother. He further explains that when his mother died, he was not any more saddened by the news than he would be had a stranger died. In “Discourse on the Logic of Language”, Philip concludes that because she has no “mother tongue”, she is “dumb tongued”. She does not know her origins of where she came from. This is a result of the oppression and white washing faced by African Americans in society. Frederick Douglass relates to this with his lack of knowledge of his own life. He did not know where he came from, who his family was, his birthday or where and when he was born. “What is my mother tongue?” asks Philip. Slaves were not taught to read, speak or write to guarantee that they would not be knowledgeable. It was also a way to dehumanize them. By refusing slaves access to language, they could not question authority and oppression. Whites feared that knowledge would lead to the downfall and enslavement of whites. Along with having a lack of human connection with his mother, Frederick Douglass was unsure of who his father was. Many people told him that his Master was his father which was extremely conflicting. He explained that his Master would be extra hard on him so that he would not get accused of favoring or going easy on his son. This lack of love and human connection from his supposed father made Frederick feel like they were strangers and that his father was foreign. In “Discourse on the Logic of Language”, Philip states, “English is my father tongue, a father tongue is a foreign language, therefore English is a foreign language …” She knows that English is foreign and not her original language – her father language is a stranger.

NourbeSe Philip cleverly turns the word “language” to “anguish” to “foreign anguish” throughout the poem. By transforming this word, Philip connects language to suffering. The loss of her language leads to and is the cause of her suffering or “anguish”. Throughout the novel, Frederick Douglass describes his literal suffering as a slave. He vividly depicts the abuse and horror that he and his fellow slaves faced under the rule of a foreign oppressor – the white male Master.

The voice of Philip captures us, which helps us submerge ourselves into the spoken words that describe not only her life but Douglass’ as well. Though the poem does not bluntly state the punishments and consequences that she and possibly Douglass had to go through, oppression was definitely shown.
“English is my mother tongue, a mother tongue is not a foreign language in which she slowly plays with the word until it transitions to anguish. Foreign anguish.
English is my father tongue, father tongue is a foreign language therefore English is a foreign language not a mother tongue.” Here she describes how she is oppressed due to not being able to speak her own language but something foreign and not familiar to her. The way she describes how a mother tongue is not a foreign language and a father tongue is a foreign language is similar to how a women would take up their spouse’s last name. When a woman takes up her spouse’s last name, she is losing her identity which is what Philip feel when she has to give up the language that she grew up with to speak a language that is more universal – English. While Philip had the luxury to learn English, Douglass did not. Yes, Sophia taught Douglass the alphabet and words, but this soon stops as Hugh finds out and demands Sophia to stop. Douglass was unable to fully learn the language oppressing him from the ability to communicate to the outside world. As Philip continue on with the poem, she reads “every slave caught speaking their own language will be severely punished.” For both Philip and Douglass, they were unable to make decisions on what they want or what made them comfortable whether it is their mother tongue or a new language allowing them to voice their opinions. This led to a foreign language to becoming a foreign anguish.

A Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas and M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Discourse on the Logic of Language” both touches on the topic of language and how slavery is involved with language. Frederick talks about language with his surroundings and how he learned to move away from the slavery oppression while M. NourbeSe Philip talks about language familiarity and how slavery suppressed people and their language.

Frederick talks about how he learns the language of his people and the language of his opposing white people. This goes on to help him win from the oppression put on him by the white people who controlled slavery. He learned language and through that, he learned to think for himself. He learned to question his surroundings and learned how to go against this world that is trying to suppress him.

M. NourbeSe Philip talked about the suppressed slaves. They feel that they have no “mother tongue”. They don’t know how to communicate through English since that is not how they and their family are used to talking even though white people are using it everywhere. They were not taught to use this language so they had “anguish” towards the English language.

Overall, both poems portray how the slaves and African American race are suppressed in terms of communication and language. Frederick goes against the suppression while M. NourbeSe Philip talks about how it feels to be suppressed by the English language.

“The narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” and “Discourse on the logic of language” are both very compelling pieces on the topic of slavery that touch upon some of the pain involved in slavery. The poem “Discourse…” focuses on the strife and friction caused by the conflicts of language, Fredrick Douglass compliments the poem and adds context to that strife.

“Discourse on the logic of language” repeats often the difference between a mother tongue and a father tongue, a father tongue is a foreign tongue, a foreign anguish, whereas a mother tongue is a native tongue. “English is my father tongue…  English is my mother tongue…” there is a contradiction made and repeated throughout the poem that English is both their native tongue, a foreign language, and their anguish.  The poem also talks at length about brief interactions between a new born child and her mother, about a desperate attempt to give to her the language of her mother, her breath, her tongue.

Frederick Douglass and his narrative compliment this poem and fill in the blanks very well, giving us an insight into the lives of slaves and their views on language and the anguish of their lives. The anguish that brought them to these foreign lands that they call home, that breaks the bonds between a daughter and mother, between a son and his mother. Such that Fredrick Douglass even writes “…received tidings of her death (his mother’s) with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.” In the next paragraph he talks about how his father is unknown to him, but that it was said to be his master. A white man, a foreign man. “…such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships…” their father enforcing the cruelties pushed onto them and their masters wife being one who inflicts her disdain onto them as well.

This process and situation existed intentionally, serving as a means of making rebellions more difficult, and as a means to further dehumanize the slaves. To the white men controlling the situation, the less human the slaves are the easier it is for them to justify slavery. That attempt to justify slavery, to dehumanize slaves, is perhaps the greatest sin, the most damaging one at least to everyone, everyone. It dehumanized everyone.

The first time I watched the video, I can’t stop thinking about how she keep echoing the word “language” to “anguish.” I thought that the poem was very different from other poems that I have read and listened to. I come to realize that the poem that Philip wrote is about oppression and displacement of the slaves. When she said, “English is my father tongue,a father tongue is a foreign language, therefore English is a foreign language,” (Philip) this line can be connected to Frederick Douglass’ narrative. He was forced to speak english because his masters were english speakers but it is illegal to read. The way Philip read her poem makes me feel like she is unaware of her “mother tongue” because she is forced to speak her “father tongue” that she mentioned as a foreign language.  Philip tried to make us understand how its like to be born a slave, not knowing your origin, not being able to have the privileges that others have because you are a slave.

Language is a form of communication that we use everyday, it is the most common one to express ourselves. Just knowing how to speak a language is not enough; being able to read and to speak it is the privilege that the slaves back then could not have. Douglass desired to read had opened a lot of new doors for him, he managed to escape and because of that he became a free man; not only that he is a free man he also left us a great work which is his narrative.