Mother To Son By Langston Hughes

The poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes is written in the voice of a mother giving advice to her son. In it, she compares her life to a rough and hard-to-navigate stairway that his not been “no crystal stair,” but she encourages him to keep going anyway (2, 20). Hughes gives her a very down-to-earth vocabulary to reinforce that she has had to work her way through life without the benefits of higher education, ease of profession, or even much help. Phrases like “Well, son, I’ll tell you,” and “‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard,” and “I’se still climbin’,” give her voice the authentic sound of a working class mother who knows her way around hard times (1, 6, 10). The poem has three basic sections: the explanation of her hard times, her response