The theme of, "Mother to Son," by Langston Hughes, is to keep moving on even when the worst of times is trying to hold you back. "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair/It's had tacks in it/And splinters,"(line 2-4). With this in mind, I believe the narrator is trying to metaphorically explain that the tacks and splinters in the mother's life are the parts in her life where she experience the most pain, like becoming broke or losing a family member. These tacks are what slows the mother down in her long climb, but, as she keeps saying, “She's been climbin’ on.” Also, line seventeen through eighteen describes, “Don't you set down on the steps/'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.” This furthers the point of the difficulty of life, if you stop…
To compare Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” to WAK’s “If This World Were Mine” both Langston Hughes and Kevin A Williams learn that in their life time everything can’t always go their way and sometimes they had to take a different route to achieve their goal or their dreams. To contrast the two pieces, in Mother to Son Langston Hughes had been taught by his mother that in his life there will be places with “torn boards”, “bare” rooms and even places of “darkness with no light” and he’ll have to overcome his fears and surpass these bare areas of darkness and loneliness. In If This World Were Mine WAK teaches the readers that in the world can’t always go their way and all be completely be yours and that there would be ties and knots and that…
James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and a civil rights activist, during the Harlem Renaissance. Poetry served as a powerful way for African Americans to express their experiences, struggles, and aspirations during a period of racial discrimination. In James Weldon Johnson’s “Sonnet”, the poet encourages his heart to stay strong through his brave, encouraging, and guiding attitude, suggesting that despite the challenges of life, his heart needs to resist despair and reach for hope. The speaker’s direct appeal to his heart in the opening lines of the poem shows his resilience in the face of adversity, emphasizing the importance of maintaining courage. He begins his conversation by asking his heart to be courageous and to not lose hope,…
When reading the two poems 'The rose that grew from concrete' written by Tupac Shakur and 'Mother to Son' by Langston Hughes, you will notice that they both have several distinct similarities and contrasts. The First poem written by Tupac Shakur talks about a rose that grows from a crack in the concrete all on its own with determination, and the central idea is that the hardships we face as children/teenagers don't have to shape our future in a negative way. The second poem by Langston Hughes is about a mother telling her son not to give up because she didn't when her life got hard, and the central idea is not to give up because all problems can be overcome with perseverance and determination. The biographical events that took place in both…
In the poem “Mother to Son,” the speaker is telling the boy her story and is warning him about how hard life would be when he will make the same mistakes: “So boy, don’t you turn back… ‘cause you find it’s kinder hard.” Although her past was not a “crystal stair” she still goes…
When an individual is bound by any type of constraints of conventions or circumstances, their initial natural reaction is resistance. Nonetheless, it is their ability to rise above those restrictions that defines who they really are. In the poem “Diary of a Piano Turner’s Wife”, by Wilmer Mills, the wife chooses to respond to the adverse circumstances by choosing her independence and not giving in to the conventions. The novel Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom shows Morrie Schwartz’s ability to stay positive, after going through and facing a lot of difficulties in life. In a similar manner, I can also relate to both these texts as I have been subjected to these restrictions time and again.…
In the book Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor and the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes,the character faced many challenges. In the book Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry a challenge that they faced was they did not have lots of money the father had to leave and search for a job. He found one at the railroads and worked as hard as they could to keep the 400 acres of land.This was on page 7. If they did not they would lose all of their money and become sharecroppers. One challenge that the mom and the son faced in the poem was they were getting hurt. I know this because in the poem it said The stair had tacks in it and tacks hurt if you step on them. That is One challenge that they face in the stories.…
In the poem Hughes uses the device of an extended metaphor to describe the life of the mother. The extended metaphor compares the mother’s life to a staircase. The line “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” begins and ends the poem. With this line, Hughes quickly establishes for the reader that the speaker in the poem has not had an easy life. The concept of a crystal staircase gives the reader the impression of complete opulence. Who might be the type of person whose life is compared to a crystal staircase? The reader can indulge in inferring that it would be someone with supreme wealth and someone who did not have to work as hard as the speaker did. By using the imagery of a crystal staircase as the opposite of her staircase, the reader immediately knows before learning any of the details of her staircase that she has not had an easy life.Hughes then goes on to illustrate the staircase of life that the speaker has lived. The speaker’s staircase has splinters and tacks. Both of these would be symbolic of the mother having suffered many hurts. A splinter or a tack will not cause life threatening injury, but they certainly will cause pain. If the splinters and tacks are on every step along the way, it is symbolic that her life has always had pain. Another descriptive detail of the mother’s staircase is that of boards being torn up. If a person walks on a staircase in which boards are missing, it gives the symbolic value that the mother’s life was filled with more dangerous situations than just tacks and splinters. It is symbolic that the mother has had gaping holes in her life that she had to somehow step over to arrive at the place in life that she is now. Not every step along the way was an safe one, but despite this she perseveres.…
Hi Terrell I love responding to your post they are so interesting. I also agree with what you are saying. I haven’t been a child in a long time, but when I was a child, I thought as a child and I understood as a child. I could read those rhyming witty poems and get pleasure from them. The Life of a Cupcake they put me in the oven to bake. Me a deprived and miserable cake. Feeling the heat I started to bubble. Watching the others I knew I was in trouble. This was cute as a child. But it does nothing for me now at this stage of my understanding. But those poems by Langston Hughes Mother to Son, Dreams and Let America be America Again, some of the best I have ever read. I never thought of myself as being into poetry until I read these poems.…
“That strong mother doesn't tell her cub, son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, toughen up, this is reality we are living in.”- Lauryn Hill. This quote explains that a mother will tell her son to accept the world he lives in, and he cannot change who he is, but he can prepare for it f he faces reality. (Context) In A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, Mama Younger, an open-minded, ambitious, tough, strong hearted, head of the Younger family, in her early sixties, helps take care of everyone, and as a mother and grandmother will do anything to make her family be happy and successful. (Concluding sentence)…
In Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” it is describing how a mother is talking to her son saying that life is not easy and it’s going to be a struggle and lots of hard…
In these two poems, “Speech to the Young Speech to the Progress Toward” by Gwendolyn Brooks and and “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes address the importance of determination in our lives. Here are some examples of how each poem shows the importance of determination in their own unique way.…
In both poems, both authors attempt to convince the reader of the importance of not giving up and trying harder, and do so successfully. In “Mother to Son”, Langston Hughes is able to open the eyes and the mind of the reader by comparing the narrator’s difficult life to an object that is elegant, clear and simple. At the beginning and end of the poem Hughes’ writes, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” (Hughes 2, 20). Using the crystal stair as a symbol of clarity, Hughes’ is implying that life for the narrator is not clear and is not elegant, nor simple. He establishes the struggle in the narrator’s life and compares it to the crystal stair all while subliminally hinting that one must not back down from difficult courses in one’s life because no one’s life is a “crystal stair”. Much like the previous metaphor, Hughes’ highlights the importance of determination through another metaphor. He expresses, “It’s had tacks in it / And splinters / And boards torn up / And places with no carpet on the floor” (3-6). This metaphor is comparing life to a rough, bare and hard floor that has been through a lot. The use of this metaphor illustrates the image of a life that has been through a lot, but yet continues to persevere and manage through all the problems. In the same fashion as Hughes, poet Maya Angelou has used similar figurative language in her…
In the story Son Gone Home by Langston Hughes, a mother and son who are having some conflicts in their life. The son had passed and away, and the mother is in morning of her dead son. She speaks to her son, asking him to come back, to talk to her. The son reappears in a spiritually way and talks to his mother. Telling her how she has been a terrible mother to him. He tells her that that she did a poor job feeding him and that the doctor said that he was undernourishment. Meaning he never had enough food when he was little or the right kind of foods. He tries to explain to her that she never really cared for him. That the only things she worried about was herself. Another conflict that was brought up was that the mother lost an opportunity to marry a good man, why she couldn’t marry him was she had a child with another man. No man wants to raise another’s man child. These conflicts are related because it all says that she didn’t care for her son. That the mother only cared about what she wanted. The resolution of this play is that the mother wanted to buy some flowers for her son’s grave but in order to do that she had to make at least a dollar, but her attitude still didn’t seem like she cared too much about her son.…
emphasize the importance of dreams. As Hughes stated, without dreams, “ . . . Life is a barren…