"Mother To Son"

 

Langston Hughes was a Black American poet, social activist, and novelist. He authored many poems and tended to write about the working-class lives of Black people and the hardships they faced, "avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes". 

In this blog, I will be analyzing a poem by Langston Hughes, "Mother to Son".

In the poem, it can be inferred by the title and the poem that a mother is advising her son about the hardships of life. The main theme that can be learned from this poem is to never give up even when life tries to knock you down. Throughout the poem, many colloquialisms are written to represent where the mother grew up. It can be inferred that she grew up in a not-so-safe place as well as that she did not receive much education. She uses phrases and words such as "a-climbin'", "turnin'" and "I've still goin'" while talking to her son. Her tone is very informal and shows that she did not receive a proper education. This alludes to the fact that many African Americans did not receive a higher education compared to their white counterparts in the 1920s. At the start of the poem, the mother tells her son that "life ain't been no crystal stair". "Crystal" alludes to the wealth that only white people could accomplish as well as the clear path that white people had in contrast to the hardships that Black Americans had, and "Stair" represents life. Throughout the rest of the poem she refers to the crystal stairs by using phrases such as, "climbin' on", "down the steps", and "turnin' corners". All these phrases relate to how the mother climbed those figurative stairs. The mother also describes her hard life through the phrases "it had tacks in it" and "boards were torn up". This whole time she is describing her stairs and the struggles she has while climbing those stairs. Telling us how hard it was to continue with life and keep on moving those steps. She then says "Bare." I see this as referring to how bare her life was from having anyone support her through the steps. She describes her journey through the stairs and the "corners" she had to turn. No matter how hard life got she persevered through it and that is the lesson she wants to teach her son. She wants to be a real-life example of how strength and believing in yourself can get you out of hard times. She tells her son "Don't you set down on the steps". Telling him to be like her and fight his way through life. She uses the word "honey" in an endearing motherly way, breaking the tone of tough love that can be seen throughout the poem. At the end of the poem she ends with the same sentence "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair". This creates a powerful meaning to the words "crystal stair" The colloquialisms and tone of tough love work to represent the tough life of Black Americans in the 1920s and how people persevered through that time.