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.

The Narrative of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass and the poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” by M. NourbeSe Philip compliment each other. The poem focuses on the power of language during slavery and touches upon some of the main issues in Douglass’ narrative.

The narrative informs the reader that Douglass was strayed away from his mother at an early age. He lost that human connection that a child is suppose to get as Philip describes a mother gibing her child her native tongue: “…She touches her tongue to the child’s tongue and holding the tiny mouth open she blows into it hard. She was blowing words. Her mother’s words those of her mother’s mother and all their mothers before her daughter’s mouth.” Douglass didn’t have his mother’s tongue. The only tongue he knew was the English tongue but even then he was limited to only knowing how to speak it.

Knowing the English tongue, as Philip suggests, is a “foreign anguish.” Edict II of the poem describes the consequences of speaking their (the slaves) native tongue to each other. There is the great possibility that communicating will lead to rebellion. Douglass figured this out when Mr. Auld forbade Mrs. Auld from teaching Douglass how to read and write because teaching “that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave” (20). Language is a powerful tool in life to get ahead. The slaveholders knew this and prevented the slaves from learning. But Frederick Douglass caught on at an age and realized that language was the “pathway from slavery to freedom” (20).

The connection between the narrative and the poem is very remarkable because the poem is sort of like an interpretation of the narrative and how Douglass was able to educate himself and other slaves simply by learning how to read and write. Learning how to read and write is kind of like learning a new language, you’re learning these new words and learning how to pronounce and write them is equivalent to learning a new language. In the narrative, when Sophia Auld started teaching Douglass how to read, her husband Hugh immediately put an end to it because he said that educating a slave makes them unmanageable. Ever since her husband told her, her attitude completely changed towards Douglass, she went from this caring and helpful person to this unkind and cruel person. This did not stop Douglass, through all his struggles as a slave he continued teaching himself how to read and write, thats where he really began to open his eyes and realize the actual cruelty in slavery. He started this mini movement among the slaves where he taught them how to read and in a sense he started educating them. In the poem, there is a part where she says , “if they cannot speak to each other then they cannot then form rebellion and revolution”, the slaveowners knew that if the slaves educated themselves they would rebel. Douglass’s goal was exactly that, to teach the slaves and sort of enlighten them, which will eventually cause a revolution. I think that the poem in a way sums up what Douglass was trying to do from the perspective of another slave. The narrator of the poem is a slave that expresses his or her own point of view or experience as Douglass began has teaching of writing and reading. Both the narrative and the poem connect because the poem is a literary interpretation of the experience in learning something new and going against your high power and how the learning process really felt like.

There are a few themes that jumped off the page as I was reading the “A Narrative Of the Life Of Frederick Douglas” and then watching the clip the “Discourse on Logic of Language”. Both writers point out how language can be the most basic and powerful tool. Something that remains constant throughout the book and the clip is connect they both had when discussing the power of language, and how it gives us the ability to learn how to think for ourselves and express our feelings towards one another. That is clearly a very power tool, language is the gateway to human connection which in turn opens up tremendous possibilities. In the words of,Edward Bulwer-Lytton,” The pen is mightier than the sword. By learning how to read and write and taking your ideas and writing them down on paper, it threatens the very foundation of slavery, you open the possibility of a revolt and then possibly turning your master into a slave, Douglass was a prime example of that. In the “Narrative Of the Life Of Frederick Douglas,” his master tells his wife “not to teach Frederick to read and write because he believes that illiterate slaves have lesser values and literacy makes slaves become miserable” which only reinforces my point that once the gateway to human connection is established, the slave master believes that threatens the statues quo . He also states,“if you give a n***** an inch, he will take an ell… Learning will spoil the best n***** in the world”. He further states “ the slave would at once become unmanageable and be of no value to his master” In response, however to what master’s perceived and the ultimate threat, Douglass mentions that slaves who had the desire to learn how to read and write were punished, each punishment handed down, quickly kept the established order of things untouched. The slave master’s owners desire to keep their slaves uneducated so, that they are unable to attain the necessary tools that are the fountain of a revolt, change starts with just a single idea, and the slave owners detested the idea of freedom which meant dramatic change. Change that could result with a domino effect for the rest of the country. Nourbese also addresses, that as well in the reading of the poem. She suggests that language and the lack there of can lead to the manipulation of people who are not of great wealth by classifying them as being not good enough.

The autobiography of Fredrick Douglass’s “Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglass” and the poem “Discourse on the Logic of language” both are adopted from the same background and the background is the discrimination between the white and other colored people. Both of the writings talk about the fact that sometimes situations become so worse in a life time that the language that comes from the mouth becomes a father language therefore a foreign language which is hard to express and the language that stays in the mind becomes the mother language which is easy to express. In the autobiography the narrator writes that things around him becomes so terrified that he cannot raise his voice even if he wants to. The language becomes short enough to fulfill the requirement that the mind wants.

The strong connection that I find between the two pieces is both of these show me the brutality and cruelty against the slaves regarding education and language. In the poem the poet says, “Every owner of slaves shall………………….rebellion and revolution.” In the book Fredrick Douglass says”If you give a……………no value to his master.” (P 20) Both of these quotations illustrate the mentality of the masters toward their slaves. They do not want their slaves to be literate, so that they could keep them as slaves forever. The master never want their slave to speak out because they believe that if they speak out it would be hard for them to keep them under control. The poem says the same thing in more crucial way. It says that the slaves’ tongs used to get cut so that they cannot cooperate with each other.

The autobiography and the poem both has another thing in common which is the lacking of humanity. The slaves are prepared to be slaved from the very beginning. They get separated from their mother, most of them do not even have an identity of their father, moreover they are not even allowed to see their mothers after they die. The poem illustrates the same point. It says that, the mother tries to love her child as much as she can within this short time that she has to spend with her. As she knows that she would never get a chance to see her child again.

The language is misused when the slaves could not raise their voice when they think that things are going wrong. Again the language is misused when the slave owners think that creating obstacles against education and literacy will keep the slaves’ mouth shut. Once again the language is misused when people lost all their humanity, morality and try to establish the point that they are born to be slaved.