Advice in life: Love and Marriage

Conventional wisdom has it that advice given from the older generation is always helpful. Common sense seems to dictate that since the elderly have lived life longer, they are wiser. Speaking as a voice of the younger generation, although the elderly have lived life longer, the advice they give to the younger generation is not always beneficial. One of the most popular Harlem Renaissance poets Langston Hughes and the idolized novelist Zora Neale Hurston, both wrote pieces revolving around the idea of giving advice on life. Both literary works present characters that in offering advice to the young demonstrate their own distinct personalities. Hurston and Hughes explore the idea of using life experiences to offer advice to the younger generation through active use of literary techniques. “Mother to Son” by Hughes depicts the struggles in life of a hardworking uneducated black Mother that attempts to give guidance concerning life to her son through her limited experiences. To take a case in point, Hughes’s poem “Mother to Son” the poet’s character Mother, describes her life metaphorically by relating it to a staircase. Through this metaphor one realizes that Mother has always been climbing up a staircase, meaning she has been overcoming obstacles in life and rising. Similarly, Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God explores the life of the emotionally weak black woman, Janie, who is continuously pressured to make life decisions based on the opinions that her Nanny has amassed throughout her entire life as a slave. In Hurston’s novel the author’s character Nanny, describes a woman metaphorically as a mule. Throughout the narrative, this metaphor allows one to understand the role of women in society. This description of women N...

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...cation that refutes the claim that advice from the elderly is always beneficial is when Nanny tells Janie to marry a rich man. Janie corroborates the age-old adage that advice from the elderly is always helpful. In so, she claims that advice rests upon the questionable assumption of oneself. By focusing on her own feelings and not the advice of Nanny Janie was able to marry a man she truly loved. Janie reminds us that, it is simply not true that advice is given from the older generation is helpful. These conclusions that Janie reaches in life, add weight to the argument regarding advice from the elderly. These findings challenge the idea of people who assume that advice from the older generation is always helpful. Janie’s discoveries will have significant applications in life as people decide whether to put advice from the elderly to use in their own lives.