Megan Frisbie
March 20, 2014
Essay #2
Biblical Allusion and African-American Spirituals in “Mother to Son”
Langston Hughes’s poetry often deals with racial struggles faced by African-Americans. The poem “Mother to Son” is no exception. Written as a monologue, the poem has two audiences. As the title indicates, the primary audience is her son; on an allegorical level, the story addresses the African-American community-at-large. The narrator (the mother) relates to both audiences the theme that perseverance will create a better life, despite struggles that may arise. The poem relays this theme through its poetics especially in lines two through seven which include a biblical allusion to Jacob’s ladder, and influences from African American spirituals. These ideas function together to further the narrator’s belief that, despite the successes of the Civil War, the African-American community must overcome more struggles to achieve full racial equality through perseverance, not through waiting for a divine act to create freedom.
In the poem, imagery of a “crystal stair” contradicts the biblical story of Jacob’s ladder (“Langston Hughes” 3). In Genesis, Jacob sees a ladder that connects heaven and Earth. From the ladder, God tells Jacob that “the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants… and in your seed all families of the Earth shall be blessed” (New King James Version, Genesis 28:10-15). This passage shows God giving Jacob a better life without Jacob surmounting any obstacles. This is contrasted in “Mother to Son.” The narrator (the mother) says that her life “ain’t been no crystal stair.” Since the stair is described as being made of crystal, it is portrayed as a heavenly object, like a step on Jacob’s l...
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...elps demonstrate that the poem functions as a spiritual and the language used fits into the poem as a spiritual would through the direct language.
In “Mother to Son,” Langston Hughes relates the idea that African-Americans must still fight for equality despite the advances achieved through the Civil War. He does so by contradicting the story of Jacob’s ladder and by likening his poem to a spiritual song. These help to ground the poem in elements familiar to the African-American community. By doing so, in the poem he creates a work that uses elements of the past to offer a new comment on the African-American community. Looking at the poem as a biblical allusion and as a spiritual is important. It helps readers see Hughes open up poetry to African-American audiences and also to spread the idea of perseverance in a format that is both new and based on old traditions.
“So boy, don't you turn back./Don't you set down on the steps/'Cause you finds it's kinder hard./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” (Line 14-20 Norton, 2028), is the loudest part of the poem. It speaks volumes on how she truly viewed her struggles. . The mother states “ I’se been a-climbin’ on” (Hughes & Rampersad Line 9, 60), which illustrates her dedication to becoming better. She lets it be known that her struggle is yet to be over, but she does not care how hard it will be, she is going to make it. She details the pain she endured: “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair/
In his poems, Langston Hughes treats racism not just a historical fact but a “fact” that is both personal and real. Hughes often wrote poems that reflect the aspirations of black poets, their desire to free themselves from the shackles of street life, poverty, and hopelessness. He also deliberately pushes for artistic independence and race pride that embody the values and aspirations of the common man. Racism is real, and the fact that many African-Americans are suffering from a feeling of extreme rejection and loneliness demonstrate this claim. The tone is optimistic but irritated. The same case can be said about Wright’s short stories. Wright’s tone is overtly irritated and miserable. But this is on the literary level. In his short stories, he portrays the African-American as a suffering individual, devoid of hope and optimism. He equates racism to oppression, arguing that the African-American experience was and is characterized by oppression, prejudice, and injustice. To a certain degree, both authors are keen to presenting the African-American experience as a painful and excruciating experience – an experience that is historically, culturally, and politically rooted. The desire to be free again, the call for redemption, and the path toward true racial justice are some of the themes in their
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.
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is broken winged bird that cannot fly.” -Langston Hughes The struggle in America that African Americans face throughout America’s history is a saddening story where it can apply to any type of people facing the same problems of inequality. The poem I, too and Mother to Son are both similar with the message that it represents but different in the way the message is said. Mother to Son highlights the struggles that Americans who are poverty stricken may face.
In Francis Ellen Watkins Harper's poem "The Slave Mother, A Tale of Ohio," she uses a shifting tone as well as other specific literary techniques to convey the heartbreaking story of a slave woman being separated from her child. This story specifically draws light to the horrific reality that many slaves faced: families were torn apart. Because this poem tells the story of a mother and her son, it also draws light to the love that mothers have for their children and the despair that they would go through if anything were to ever happen to them. Harper's poem addresses both race and gender, and it effectively conveys the heartbreak of the mother to the audience.
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
Hughes, Langston. The Negro mother, and other dramatic recitations. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971. Print.
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
Because of that, his writing seems to manifest a greater meaning. He is part of the African-American race that is expressed in his writing. He writes about how he is currently oppressed, but this does not diminish his hope and will to become the equal man. Because he speaks from the point of view of an oppressed African-American, the poem’s struggles and future changes seem to be of greater importance than they ordinarily would. The point of view of being the oppressed African American is clearly evident in Langston Hughes’s writing.
In “Mother to Son,” Hughes uses a worn staircase as an extended metaphor to parallel its flaws to the struggles of African Americans. The poem begins with a mother speaking to her son about the pressures of reality and telling him not to succumb. She tells her son, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair,” (Mother to Son “MS” line 2) to portray that her life is far from perfect like the stair of a white person. She describes her life as having “tacks and splinters….with boards torn up” (Hughes lines 3-5). These defects symbolize the problems in her life whether they were caused by her race or gender.
Thesis: The poems “Negro”, “I Too”, and “Song for a Dark Girl” by Langston Hughes was written around an era of civil inequality. A time when segregation was a customary thing and every African American persevered through civil prejudice. Using his experience, he focuses his poems on racial and economic inequality. Based on his biographical information, he uses conflict to illustrate the setting by talking about hardships only a Negro would comprehend and pride only a Negro can experience, which helps maintain his racial inequality theme.
Langston Hughes, born in February 1st, 1902, grew up in segregated America. His own ancestry was as mixed as that described in the poem. Both his great-grandmothers were enslaved African Americans and both his grandparents were white slave owners. Both of Hughes’ parents were of mixed race descent. Many of his family members were key figures in the elevation of blacks in society, and they impressed upon him the nobility of black people. Hughes had a rootless and often lonely upbringing, moving back and forth between family members’ homes. Hughes was a prominent leader of the Harlem Renaissance and referred to it as the period when “the negro was in vogue”.
Analyzing the poem’s title sets a somber, yet prideful tone for this poem. The fact that the title does not say “I Speak of Rivers,” but instead, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1) shows that he is not only a Negro, but that he is not one specific Negro, but in his first person commentary, he is speaking for all Negroes. However, he is not just speaking for any Negroes. Considering the allusions to “Mississippi” (9) and “Abe Lincoln” (9) are not only to Negroes but also to America, confirms that Hughes is talking for all African Americans. This poem is a proclamation on the whole of African American history as it has grown and flourished along the rivers which gave life to these people.
On his way to Padan-Aram, he came to Bethel to sleep for the night. He took a stone and placed it under his head. Some critics believe that a correction to our traditional misunderstanding of this stone placing is that Jacob took the stone and placed it not under his head as a pillow, but rather “at his head” for protection. While sleeping here, he dreams of a ladder set up on the earth, reaching all the way up to heaven. He saw the angels of God ascending and descending on it. The opinion of some critics is that what Jacob saw in his dream was not a “ladder” but a “stairway”. Some years ago, at a site twenty-five miles northeast of Bethel, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a divided stone staircase leading from the city down to its water source.
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.