Essay On Mother To Son By Langston Hughes

In Langston Hughes poem Mother to Son the speaker is a mother who is giving her son advice that life is no crystal stair. Using “son” in the first line allows the reader to think about their son or any son in the world and not just one person if it was referring to a Richard or Tommy. Throughout the poem the narrator uses various symbols to describe what her stairs look like such as “It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up,” (Hughes 559). These symbols give off the connotation meaning that even though tacks and splinters were on her stairs does not mean they would actually appear. The narrator tries to give her son the meaning of life by saying it’s not going to be perfect, along the way you will reach some obstacles such as tacks or splinters and one must keep moving forward in order to get passed them. The mother was not received a “crystal stair” she did not get things handed to her or drowned in wealth, instead she had to work for what she wanted. The narrator gives her son advice by saying “So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps” (Hughes 559). If life were a crystal stair,

The metaphor in this poem is comparing life to a set of crystal and broken stairs; if your stairs aren’t broken you won’t be able to become a better well-being. The universal message in Mother to Son is everybody in life will have an uphill struggle, it is your job to conquer those struggles and soon enough you could create your own crystal path. In this poem no personification, similes or denotation were used but Hughes used a good amount of Ebonics throughout this poem. This poem gives off the impression that the mother was not well educated and lived in poverty by the use of words “ain’t” and “I’se and the line “And places with no carpet on the floor” (Hughes 559). Majority of the lines contain improper spelling of words such as climbin, turnin’,