Mother To Son Poem By Langston Hughes

Poem and Song #1: Never Give Up “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes is a well-known piece written during the Harlem Renaissance. In this poem, Hughes uses a mother-figure as a narrator. She is speaking to her son and telling him about her life. She has had a rough life but has persevered to this point and plans on continuing that. She tells her son to never give up and to keep going even when it’s hard. The overall tone of this poem is one of hope and perseverance. When Hughes’ narrator says “Don’t you set down on the steps. ‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard”, she is telling her son that there is hope and that he needs to keep pushing. The theme of this poem is that you should never give up and you have to have perseverance in order to accomplish anything. The speaker shows her son that she’s been able to do it and that if he continues in her footsteps and doesn’t give up then he’ll be able to accomplish things himself as well. I believe that even though the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes and the song “If You’re Going Through Hell” by
In this poem, McKay uses imagery to describe the wonderful homeland that he left. He reminisces about his home and is eventually overcome with grief and is brought to tears because of the longing in his heart for his homeland. There are many tone shifts in this poem. He starts off being cheerful but this soon changes to mournfulness. Then, as McKay remembers that he’s stuck in a foreign land, his “eyes [grow] dim” and he “[turns] his head and [weeps].” Through his tone and his actions in this poem, McKay reveals to us that the theme of this poem is that the love of one’s homeland can be rooted into the very soul of someone. He shows this from the perfect view he has of his homeland at the beginning of the poem and the emotion that he is overcome with at the end of the