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Essay about mother to son by langston hughes
Langston hughes poetic devices
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The main metaphor in the poem, Mother to Son, by Langston Hughes is the comparison between the speaker's life to not being a crystal stair. She has to power through the conflicts and obstacles she is faced with in her life. In the poem, the speaker is talking about how there have been tacks, splinters, and torn up board representing the obstacles that she has faced in her lifetime. Another example would be how the speaker says that there are “places with no carpet on the floor-Bare” (Hughes 6-7). This means that at times, there was nothing good ahead of the speaker’s life. It was completely bare. It connects to the main metaphor because a crystal staircase is a beautiful, flawless, unique staircase where the one that the speaker is climbing
is the complete opposite. Lastly, in the poem the speaker talks about how she has been climbing the whole time, reaching landings, turning corners, and sometimes going in the dark, where there there hadn’t been any light. This means that all this time in life, the speaker just kept moving forward on her own “staircase” and has entered times in her life where there was no hope (The Dark). It connects to the main metaphor because even though her “staircase” isn’t perfect like a crystal staircase, she still makes the best of her situation. In conclusion, the main metaphor in the poem, which is how that the speaker’s life hasn’t been like a crystal staircase, connects to how that the speaker’s life has been rough, stressful, and at some points, pointless. However, the speaker keeps climbing the “staircase” of her life to get to where she wants to be.
Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale, Kourtney K. and Scott Disick broke up due to finding out that their relationship wasn't working.This shows that being in love is difficult and has a downside at times.The authors of "Love's Vocabulary", "My Shakespeare",and Romeo and Juliet use metaphors,allusions and again metaphors to illustrate how confusing love is. In "Love's Vocabulary" Diane Ackerman uses metaphors to describe how love can be a struggle when you're in a relationship.In line 1 she says "love is the great intagible" which sums up the idea
In the metaphoric sense they endured the travel from their homeland to the unknown, which was brave of them. Mother to Son starts off with the mother referencing to the past by saying “Well son, I’ll tell you:/ Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” She is alluding to her past and how it has been tumultuous, but she is still
Another fitting quote from the text is something the mother says at the end of the poem, ¨So boy, don’t you turn back. [...] Don’t you fall now For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair¨ (Hughes lines 14-20) This shows the Mother's purpose in telling this story. The mother says to the son, using her stair metaphor, to keep persevering through life, as she had.
Grandpa and Thomas is a fictional text that is designed to suit young readers of lower primary school. In the below evaluation this text will be broken down in relation to the Four Roles of the Reader and demonstrate how the text can support students as developing readers.
With using diction, the reader will feel like they are an observer of the conversation, with the talking happening right in front of them. The choice of words that the author uses illustrates how the mother doesn’t think that she has not accomplished climbing on the “crystal stair”. The author uses words like “kinder” and “I’se” in the poem to make the speaker sound uneducated to the reader. Hughes does this, because he wants the reader to get a sense of her background. If she didn’t get the education she needed, then that contributes to why the woman has had a rough life. The author writes in this uneducated sounding English because he wants the reader to know that you don’t have to be completely educated in order to have strength and hope. The speaker may not be as educated as other people, but she knows how to set a strong base of life lessons for her
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” She starts here by telling her son how hard life has been for her with the mention of the metaphor ‘crystal stair’, which is a reference to wealth and reaching the top. “It had tacks in it. And splinters. And boards torn up.
First, the author uses Figurative language to develop the theme by the mother uses a metaphor to describe her life and how difficult it was. It says, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters. And boards were torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor—Bare.“This shows the author use Figurative language to develop the theme of You have to rise above the obstacles because life is going to throw obstacles at you and you have to try to avoid them. This shows the theme because instead of going back down the staircase where there are no problems you have to push through to get over the problem. Second, the author uses Symbol to develop the theme by using the staircase that represents life and life is hard and there will be a ton of thing that try to push us down and just try to stop us It says, “ I’ve been a-climbing’ on, And reachin’ landings, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. “This shows the author used Symbol to develop the theme of You have to rise above the obstacles because the mother kept going non-stop. This is important to notice because there will be a ton of thing that try to push us down and just try to stop us. To, sum up, the author of “Mother to Son” revealed the theme through Figurative language and
In line seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen Hughes says, “Don’t you fall now– For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’.” What Hughes expresses in these lines is that just because the stairs become hard to climb at times do not quit. One of Hughes’ most important elements is symbols in his poem “Mother to Son.” She still struggles forward, no matter what may have been the bleakest moments of her life, where there seemed to be no hope. When climbing the stairs she is “reachin’ landin’s, / and turnin’ corners, / and sometimes goin’ in the dark”.
Maus tells a story of Spiegelman’s, Vladek, and his experience as a Polish Jew during the Holocaust. Spiegelman’s Maus gives us a detailed look at the ways Jews were persecuted in German-occupied territories during World War II. The Jews were seen as inferior, disposable and deprived of the most basic human rights. Instead of drawing the characters as human, Art Spiegelman, in his graphic novel Maus, chooses to merge the different identities and draw each character through a definitive scope of animals: Mice were used to represent the Jewish people, cats to represent the Germans, pigs to represent the people of Poland and dogs to represent Americans. He uses metaphors which are figures of speech that is used to make a comparison between two things that aren't alike but do have something in common, in this instance animals. Mr. Spigelman strategically chose the animal characters and had a stereotypical relation to the character the animals depicted in the story. Mr. Spiegelman convincingly argues that he was using “Hitler’s pejorative attitudes against themselves,” and that using animals “allowed me to approach otherwise unsayable things” (Gardner 2011, p 2). There are many times throughout the text
His poems established him as a well known poet in Harlem. In two of his poems one titled “Mother to Son” and the other “Harlem” both have some comparison and contrast between the two. The poem “Mother to Son” is more of a free lyric flowing poem. In this poem Langston Hughes gets the message across in a powerful attack. The poem is narrated from a mother’s viewpoint and the wisdom she gives her son as read in the following lines:
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
The poem contains the central idea that many of these children never understood what home really means. In Native American culture the people venerate earth and it is referred to as mother nature which we see in the poem. The rails cut right through their home but they don’t view them like the average person. They view the tracks as if they are scars across mother earths face and her face is the Native American’s homeland. She is scarred for eternity but she is perfect in their dreams. This symbolism is ironic because the children try to reach home using the railroad that ruined natural life for them and many other Native Americans. In the second stanza the speaker says “The worn-down welts of ancient punishments lead back and fourth” (15-16). Which can be talking about the marks on the children’s bodies after getting caught while running away. But the “word-down welts” can also symbolize the welts that were put on mother nature throughout history. The last five lines of the poem sums up the symbol of hope through their memories and dreams. The last line of the poem says, “the spines of names and leaves.” (20-24). The “spines” symbolize the physical strength of the children and their ability to maintain hope individually “names”, and for their tribe
In his poems, Masters used free verse patterns to make his subjects seem more natural. There are really no historical or literary allusions in this poem. Although she barely includes any similes or metaphors in her poem, there are a few. Lucinda says at the end of the poem ?Life is too strong for you?It takes life to love Life?. Lucinda has a very satisfied tone, which means that she was very happy with her life. By saying that, she is relating that she was very satisfied and happy with her life.
Form and meaning are what readers need to analyze to understand the poem that they are evaluating. In “Mother to Son”, his form of writing that is used frequently, is free verse. There is no set “form”, but he gets his point across in a very dramatic way. The poem is told by a mother who is trying to let her son know that in her life, she too has gone through many frustrations just like what her son is going through. The tone of this poem is very dramatic and tense because she illustrates the hardships that she had to go through in order to get where she is today. She explains that the hardships that she has gone through in her life have helped her become the person that she has come to be. Instead of Hughes being ironic, like he does in some of his poems, he is giving the reader true background on the mother’s life. By introducing the background, this helps get his point across to the reader in a very effective way. In this poem there are many key words which help portray the struggles that the mother is trying to express to her son. The poem is conveyed in a very “down to earth” manner. An example of this is, “Life for me ain’t been a crystal stair (462).” This quote shows the reader that the mom is trying to teach the son a lesson with out sugar coating it. She wants her son to know that throughout her life has had many obstacles to overcome, and that he too is going to have to get through his own obstacles no matter how frustrating it is. Her tone throughout the poem is stern telling the boy, “So boy, don’t turn your back (462).” The poems tone almost makes the reader believe that the mother is talking to them, almost as if I am being taught a valuable lesson.
The metaphor in this poem conjoins life, and a staircase, "Well, son, I'll tell you:/ life for me ain't been no crystal stair. " The mother says to her son, that life is not an easy journey that can be stroll through.. Instead, in this passage of the poem, she tells her son that life is hard, full of stumbling blocks, but one must keep climbing, one cannot turn back or sit down, because one will catch a break, a turn, a landing, and keep going. She uses the "crystal stair," to describe a life that is opposite to hers. Crystal is thought of as something delicate, precious, and valuable; every step of life on a crystal stair would be full of priceless opportunities.