Discourse on the Logic of Language and“Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass
Both M. NourbeSe Philips’ poem of “Discourse on the Logic of Language” and “Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” impact me on deeply thinking of the importance of learning knowledges and language in the life. In 19th century, the slaves must not get education, since the slaveholders just wanted them to work with tireless and obedient to earn more profit for themselves. The poem points out the influence of language when Philips read the Edict 1, “Every owner of slaves shall wherever possible shall ensure that the slaves belong to as many ethno-linguistic groups as possible. If they cannot speak to each other, they cannot then ferment rebellion and revolution”. This is the reason why slaveholders forced slaves to learn “father language”, which the simple English made slaves unable to communicate with each other, destroyed their ability to defiance. Also the poem came with two special ways of writing such as repeating the word as “lang” as language and putting questions into poem, leaded me to have more understanding of that feelings. “Learning would spoil the best nig** in the world” (20) from Douglass’s autobiography. This is how Auld spoke to his wife and Douglass when his kind wife tried to teaching Douglass. Whereupon, he realized that learning language can change his life and even change all slave’s history. This is the reason why our eminent Douglass would be an important anti-slavery hero in the history, as he had seen and learned a lot during his slavish live. Therefore, he knew he can use language to publicize the abolition of slavery. For slaveholders, the happiness was built on suffering of slaves. Thus slaveholders would about slaves would loss control when slaves had language and knowledges. After reading these two articles, I can image the horrible life Douglass had and the pathetic history of slaves. I can also see how inhuman slaveholder punish their slaves.