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Mother to son by langston hughes sparknotes
Analysis of the Langston Hughes poem
Analysis of the Langston Hughes poem
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On the road of life, many obstacles come about that one must overcome to make themself feel complete. The poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes was written in 1922. Langston Hughes was a black writer, whose work started to be published in the 1920s. “Mother to Son,” which shows a black mother telling her son to stay hopeful despite all the hardships one may encounter in life. Here the author is passing a message to the public through this woman of wisdom.The mother tells her son that life has not always been easy for her, yet she is still carrying on. This poem “Mother to Son” has many poetry elements within the poem. The poem shows the message of staying hopeful through the obstacles one may encounter throughout life. Hughes uses metaphors, …show more content…
In line seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen Hughes says, “Don’t you fall now– For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’.” What Hughes expresses in these lines is that just because the stairs become hard to climb at times do not quit. One of Hughes’ most important elements is symbols in his poem “Mother to Son.” She still struggles forward, no matter what may have been the bleakest moments of her life, where there seemed to be no hope. When climbing the stairs she is “reachin’ landin’s, / and turnin’ corners, / and sometimes goin’ in the dark”. Even though these are “home like” things someone may face on a staircase, they are actually metaphors that mean things that she has encountered in her life. She says that she reaches landings, which can mean that she has come up on places where she could rest. When she says she turns corners, it is when her life changes and she has to turn away from her original path that it was on. When she says “sometimes goin’ in the dark where there ain’t been no light.” This contrasting color imagery of dark and light shows the idea that it is always dark before the dawn and bad days come before better ones and just when it might seem as if there is no relief in sight, something occurs to get rid of all of your burdens. The mother then advises her son not to give up and let life get him down just because there are a few struggles in
Another fitting quote from the text is something the mother says at the end of the poem, ¨So boy, don’t you turn back. [...] Don’t you fall now For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair¨ (Hughes lines 14-20) This shows the Mother's purpose in telling this story. The mother says to the son, using her stair metaphor, to keep persevering through life, as she had.
“So boy, don't you turn back./Don't you set down on the steps/'Cause you finds it's kinder hard./Don't you fall now --/For I'se still goin', honey,/I'se still climbin',/And life for me ain't been no crystal stair” (Line 14-20 Norton, 2028), is the loudest part of the poem. It speaks volumes on how she truly viewed her struggles. . The mother states “ I’se been a-climbin’ on” (Hughes & Rampersad Line 9, 60), which illustrates her dedication to becoming better. She lets it be known that her struggle is yet to be over, but she does not care how hard it will be, she is going to make it. She details the pain she endured: “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair/
With using diction, the reader will feel like they are an observer of the conversation, with the talking happening right in front of them. The choice of words that the author uses illustrates how the mother doesn’t think that she has not accomplished climbing on the “crystal stair”. The author uses words like “kinder” and “I’se” in the poem to make the speaker sound uneducated to the reader. Hughes does this, because he wants the reader to get a sense of her background. If she didn’t get the education she needed, then that contributes to why the woman has had a rough life. The author writes in this uneducated sounding English because he wants the reader to know that you don’t have to be completely educated in order to have strength and hope. The speaker may not be as educated as other people, but she knows how to set a strong base of life lessons for her
In Langston Hughes’ poem, A Dream Deferred, Hughes wonders what happens to a dream that does not come true. He writes, “Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?” In A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, Walter shows that his deferred dream does both. Early in the play, he shares his hopes and dreams for his family and their future with his young son, Travis. He imagines that earning his fortune will cure all the shortcomings and injustices in their lives. The limitations of Walter’s aspirations for himself and his family undermine his ability to save his family. Walter’s acceptance of unjust systems, which makes one man “master” and another one “servant,” compromises the power of Walter’s dream. By showing that Walter has internalized this corrupt system, Hansberry illustrates that his dream will not bring Walter or his family happiness.
This chapter attempts to focus upon the problem of identity that confronted the African-Americans in America. Thus it investigates the African-American’s identity dilemma as shown in the poetry of Claude McKay and Langston Hughes. At the same time, it provides a solution for the African-American’s problem of estrangement and identity crisis. But while McKay’s self-rejection of his blackness urges him to trace the quest for identity in exile, Hughes’ self acceptance of his blackness enables him to reconcile with the white oppressors who stripped the black race from its identity. Moreover, it sheds light upon the psychological consequences that resulted from the violation of the African-American’s identity. Furthermore, this chapter shows the African-American’s self debasement, helplessness, and double consciousness that emanate from the sense of uprootedness.
First, the author uses Figurative language to develop the theme by the mother uses a metaphor to describe her life and how difficult it was. It says, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters. And boards were torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor—Bare.“This shows the author use Figurative language to develop the theme of You have to rise above the obstacles because life is going to throw obstacles at you and you have to try to avoid them. This shows the theme because instead of going back down the staircase where there are no problems you have to push through to get over the problem. Second, the author uses Symbol to develop the theme by using the staircase that represents life and life is hard and there will be a ton of thing that try to push us down and just try to stop us It says, “ I’ve been a-climbing’ on, And reachin’ landings, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. “This shows the author used Symbol to develop the theme of You have to rise above the obstacles because the mother kept going non-stop. This is important to notice because there will be a ton of thing that try to push us down and just try to stop us. To, sum up, the author of “Mother to Son” revealed the theme through Figurative language and
African American families have special challenges. In his novel When All Is Said and Done, author Robert Hill explored the large portion of women and adolescents who, through the years, have had to work inside and outside the home long before careers for women was ever established and became more acceptable and adaptable in society. Although Hill’s characters are Jewish, his story resonates on how necessary and extraordinarily versatile historical family roles are in African American families. Langston Hughes’s special poem, Mother to Son, likewise captures the voice of an African American mother’s struggles as she challenges her son to face life’...
She starts here with telling her son how hard life has been for her with the mentioning of the metaphor ‘crystal stair’, which is a reference of wealth and reaching the top.
Each line is different in length, and each line has different syntax in the same way the staircase “had tacks in it, / And splinters, / And boards torn up, / And places with no carpet on the floor –/ Bare.” (lines 3-7). Some lines end with a period, some a comma or ellipses, and still others lack any guidance at all as to how the syntax goes at all [“But all the time” (line 8)]. In this way, Hughes emphasizes that although life is to be taken in strides, that does not mean each “step” of your life will be easy, nor does it mean every step will be hard with “splinters” (line 4)– some will simply be “bare” (line 7). Moreover, some steps in life will be shorter (as in duration of time) in the same way some of the lines are longer than others.
She was merely teaching her son a lesson, or maybe she was scolding him, and using that as a life lesson. Either way, she was the inspiration for the poem. I was unable to locate online the reason that the poem was initially written - however, I can only assume that he is remembering a time when his mother was right, and he’s wishing he had listened. Maybe he is now older, wiser, and faced with a decision where he wants two things equally, and needs to make a decision.
Opposed to Mother to Son, the son is confused and isn’t determined to
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
Form and meaning are what readers need to analyze to understand the poem that they are evaluating. In “Mother to Son”, his form of writing that is used frequently, is free verse. There is no set “form”, but he gets his point across in a very dramatic way. The poem is told by a mother who is trying to let her son know that in her life, she too has gone through many frustrations just like what her son is going through. The tone of this poem is very dramatic and tense because she illustrates the hardships that she had to go through in order to get where she is today. She explains that the hardships that she has gone through in her life have helped her become the person that she has come to be. Instead of Hughes being ironic, like he does in some of his poems, he is giving the reader true background on the mother’s life. By introducing the background, this helps get his point across to the reader in a very effective way. In this poem there are many key words which help portray the struggles that the mother is trying to express to her son. The poem is conveyed in a very “down to earth” manner. An example of this is, “Life for me ain’t been a crystal stair (462).” This quote shows the reader that the mom is trying to teach the son a lesson with out sugar coating it. She wants her son to know that throughout her life has had many obstacles to overcome, and that he too is going to have to get through his own obstacles no matter how frustrating it is. Her tone throughout the poem is stern telling the boy, “So boy, don’t turn your back (462).” The poems tone almost makes the reader believe that the mother is talking to them, almost as if I am being taught a valuable lesson.
“An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stair”(Line 15 Handout). A metaphor telling about the emptiness of what life brings in reality. The cup represents life being desolate, after drinking up all the good out of it. The stairs represent the state of an aching climb throughout life. “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow”(The Waking Handout).
The poem Mother to Son is about a mother trying to teach her son perseverance to life, this is demonstrated by her comparing stairs to life