In the Douglas narrative, the type of language that has been used is pathos. The first sentence of the poem starts as my mother, showing that the narrator is speaking in the first person; hence the things that he is talking about are from a personal reflection. Pathos language involves an uninterrupted conversation with self, where one lays out their bare soul. In this language, emotions of pity and sorrow are evoked. The narrator remembers the experience of his mother’s death vividly because he was only seven years old when it happens, and he still has fresh memories of how death made him feel. The author is in an emotional turmoil as he thinks about the tender care and love that he did not get to enjoy from his mother. He is sorrowful that he will never know that feeling, or even experience it again.
The quote has successfully illustrated the main points of the text, as it is clear that the narrator was a slave. In the line, “on ones of my master’s farm,” illustrates that he was a subject in another man’s house. During this period, slaves were considered property to their masters. They had no rights, and this could be the reason he was not able to be with his mother through her sickness and death. Slavery denied him the opportunity to receive tender love and care from her mother. The master must have separated them. Due to this separation, a parental connection was not felt. The narrator received the death of his mother with fewer emotions, “I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotion I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger.” The passage, therefore, has displayed pathos language and also brought out the main ideas of the poem, which are sorrow and pity.