Don T Quit, By Langston Hughes

Your goal is so close, yet so far, just out of arm’s reach. You hang over the edge of a cliff, your only goal is survival in a vast, dangerous world. But one slip could mean everything. Arm goes numb, vision fails, and mind shuts down. Just “me, myself, and I” as the goal of survival is just one jump and skip away into the dirt path ahead. While both Langston Hughes in “Mother to Son” and Edgar Albert Guest in “Don’t Quit” both use personification to communicate the importance of determination in life, Hughes also relies on repetition, while Guest utilizes metaphors to express the idea of determination. In “Mother to Son”, another tells her son not to give up by telling him about how hard her life was and how her life wasn’t a “crystal stair”.

In “Mother to Son”, Hughes uses personification to describe the setting of the “stairs” that she had t o struggle climbing. Hughes uses these stairs to personify the real struggle which the mother experienced in the past. The mother describes the “stairs” as a very derogatory setting. SHe makes the stairs look as disappeling as her life was. In the text, “Mother to Son”, Langston Highes states, “...And places with no carpet on the floor - bare…” The mother expresses the difficulties she had to thrive through in order to reach her goal. She also states earlier that “...life for me ain't been no crystal stair…” Using the description the mother gave, we can infer that the mother tries to encourage her son to stay determined just like she did. Guest also uses personification to communicate what failure felt like for her, and despite this feeling, we must persevere. In the text, “Don’t Quit”, Edgar Albert states, “...when care is pressing you down a bit - rest if you must, but don’t you quit…” The author tries to convey to the reader that even when you feel unmotivated and burnout, it's okay to need a break. However, it’s not okay to

In “Mother to Son”, Hughes uses repetition to make sure the reader understands the theme behind the poem. The poem relies on the theme of determination and although this theme develops throughout the duration of the plot, the repeated phrase does set a specific tone for the reader which hints to the reader what they are going to discuss in the poem. In “Mother to Son”, the author states, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair”. In this excerpt of the text, the mother says that her life hasn’t always been beautiful and nice like people thought it was. It wasn’t a field of daisies and bright green grass. It was often a field of dead grass, thunder, and a dark void sky. Throughout the poem, the mother explains how when she walked up the stairs, they weren’t always the easiest. She talks about the torn up boards of splintering wood, a carpetless floor, and walking through a dark void where even light cannot enter. However, she perseveres, and stays determined to reach her goal. In this case, the goal would be to reach the top of the stairs. In contrast to “Mother to Son”, Guest uses metaphors to express the idea of determination in “Don’t Quit”. This poem uses metaphors to express what could happen if one does not stay determined toward their goal. He says that if one does not stay determined, then they may never succeed. Throughout the poem, Guest tries to express this