How Does Langston Hughes Use Alliteration In Mother To Son

Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” is a moving poem from the Harlem Renaissance time period. Hughes uses a speaker for his poem to set up the mother and son talk. In “Mother to Son” the speaker, a mother, is telling her son that she is still moving forward even though her life has not been easy and no matter how hard life gets for her she has not given up and neither should he. Hughes writes vicariously via the Mother, the speaker; he uses literary devices like metaphors, consonance, repetition and alliteration to help get the mother’s point across to her son. Like many of the poems written during the Harlem Renaissance, “Mother to Son” is written in free verse and simply follows the conversation that the mother and son are having. Personally, I was able to break the poem in to three sections: lines 1-7 are the introduction and the mother

The speaker starts the poem by saying “Well, son, I’ll tell you:” (1), this is the speaker’s way of getting her sons attention. It is easy to relate to as one can relate to his or her mother trying to grab his or her attention. In the next line the speaker introduces a metaphor to set up the next few lines by saying “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (2). A crystal stair represents life without a struggle as it is clear and life without struggles should be smooth. From the next few lines it is easy to see that this is meant as a metaphor because the speaker’s life had been the total opposite. The speaker builds on the metaphor in the following lines by showing how rugged the steps are in order to show how hard her life has