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).