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Words of langston hughes theme for english b
Langston Hughes and the contribution of African American literature
Langston Hughes and the contribution of African American literature
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In the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, Hughes explores a relationship between a mother and son and she gives him advice on how to deal with hardships in life and perseverance in the face of adversity. Hughes uses a mix of dialect, free verse, metaphor, and imagery to create this theme of the poem. In the poem, the crystal stair referred to is a metaphor for an extravagant life. And as the speaker claims “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Hughes 2) she is really describing that her life has not always been painless, or easy. “It’s had tacks in it, / And splinters, / And boards torn up, / And places with no carpet on the floor— / Bare.” (Hughes 3-7). These descriptions of the stairway can be compared to things that happen in …show more content…
life. The tacks on a stairway might be equivalent to something unexpected and painful that happened in the mother’s life.
The splinters function similarly, however the pain from a splinter usually lasts longer than a tack. Furthermore, a stairway without carpet symbolizes that it is unfinished, and unpadded. It is raw, barren, and dangerous. This might mean that at some point in the mother’s life she lived in extreme poverty with little-to-nothing to her name. It could have been a point of uncertainty in which she felt afraid. But, through all this, “I’se been a-climbin’ on, / And reachin’ landin’s, / And turnin’ corners, / And sometimes goin’ in the dark / Where there ain’t been no light.” (Hughes 9-13). Once again, she uses multiple metaphors to describe her “climb”, or her ascent through life. “Reaching landings” means that she has worked hard enough and now she has reached a point where she can stop climbing as hard and relax a bit. And “turning corners” means that she redirected her life drastically, either willingly or unwillingly. Whenever she goes in the dark, where there isn’t light, this could be symbol for hard times, like depression, or periods in her life in which she had little hope and felt discouraged with no way to guide herself using the “light”. The mother begins to conclude her speech by saying “So boy, don’t you
turn back. / Don’t you set down on the steps ”(Hughes 14-15). This is a metaphor comparing setting down on the steps with giving up on life. The mother is trying to inspire her son not to give up in life by explaining all of the hardships that she has faced in her life, and yet managed to courageously overcome. This scenario described of a strong, determined woman overcoming numerous obstacles, such as tacks, splinters, and bare floors, paints a vivid scene in the reader’s mind. The literal translation of a woman climbing a stairway and seeing her son sitting down on the steps is portrayed. The reader sees a dingy, rickety set of stairs with extremely dark portions as a strong-willed woman makes her way up. She then comes across her son, sitting down, and that is when she says the words in the poem to her son. The dialect of the protagonist in addition with the free verse style of the poem is used fluently in order to create a very personal feel within the poem. The speaker uses informal diction like “I’se” and “ain’t been” , which comes across to read as if the mother is being very affectionate. A large sum of lines in the poem begin with “and”; which again is informal and seems less as if this was a premeditated conversation and more like this was a real, improvised conversation between a mother and a child. In addition to the dialect, this is a free verse poem. The focus does not lie in the flow of lines or the rhyming of words, but rather the important message that lies within the words. Underneath this outer shell of literal meaning, there is an emotionally charged message. The rhythm, metaphors, and imagery culminate to create a layered poem of a mother telling her son to never give up in life.
“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/
“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.
Wasley, Aidan. "An overview of “Mother to Son”." Poetry for Students. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.
Everyone has them, people that raised them from when they were born, in most cases a mother and father. The memoir ‘’Salvation’’ by Langston Hughes and the essay ‘’Mothers’’ by Anna Quindlen awakened me to explore my relationship with my own parents. ‘’Salvation’’ gave me this over powering feeling that I knew exactly how young Langston felt sitting in that pew. I felt that I could also, to an extent, connect with the narrator in ‘’Mothers.’’ ‘’Salvation’’ and ‘’Mothers’’ both created emotional reactions from me; while ‘’Salvation’’ aroused feelings of vulnerability, ‘’Mothers’’ exposed questions about my parents.
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:
Langston Hughes's stories deal with and serve as a commentary of conditions befalling African Americans during the Depression Era. As Ostrom explains, "To a great degree, his stories speak for those who are disenfranchised, cheated, abused, or ignored because of race or class." (51) Hughes's stories speak of the downtrodden African-Americans neglected and overlooked by a prejudiced society. The recurring theme of powerlessness leads to violence is exemplified by the actions of Sargeant in "On the Road", old man Oyster in "Gumption", and the robber in "Why, You Reckon?"
In the story “Father and Son,” Langston Hughes presents Cora as an African American woman that is the mother of her slave owner’s, Colonel Norwood, children. She destabilizes traditional gender roles by acting crazy to help her son, Bert, after he murders his father, Colonel Norwood. Though she doesn’t have nearly as much input as the men in her society, she is a central female character because she makes herself seem crazy to elicit fear and to manipulate the white men into thinking she is unintelligent. Her self empowerment intensifies due to her perseverance in helping her son. She changes from a typical reticent African American woman to a confident and smart woman by coming up with a plan to save Bert from the lynching and inflicting authority
In the opening verse of the song, the speaker discusses the need to see her childhood home at least once more before moving on with her life. She shares with the current homeowner some of her experiences while growing up in the house. For instance, she says, “I know they say you can’t go home again, but I just had to come back one last time.” This shows that the speaker realizes that returning “home” is going to be a different experience than it was when she lived there, but she cannot resist the temptation of a final visit to the “house”. The speaker says that “Up those stairs in that little back bedroom, is where I did my homework and learned to play guitar. And I bet you didn’t know, under that live oak, my favorite dog is buried in the yard.” This indicates some of the significant memories the speaker has of her time in the house, such as honing her...
In A Lesson before Dying by Earnest Gaines, Jefferson is falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to death because of the color of his skin. Grant Wiggins is a teacher who is responsible for making Jefferson a man again after he is called a hog and convinces himself that he is worthless. Each of the poems describes either a person or their relationship with someone despite that fact that neither the poems nor the book had any correlation when being written. Since the authors of the poem went through similar life experiences compared to the characters in A Lesson before Dying, their stories are very alike. Further analyzation of the book is able to be made by comparing it to a poem. In “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, the relationship between
Similarly, given the vagueness of the objects that the narrator “cant quite place” within the second stanza, amplifies the trouble that she does not seem to remember exactly what she’s talking about. She begins to describe “a photograph of somebody I never knew, but knew the name of” perhaps a celebrity or distant family member. The end stop lines portray that there is not a lot of depth to the memories on the tray, that they’re truncated. She then moves on to depict her dream to the reader, and I interpret it almost as if the “drooping heads of flowers” is metaphor about life. Life is transient and in the end, will all she remembers about her own life be milk teeth and a contraceptive? The use of numbers in parenthesis could similarly echo life’s cyclical nature such as the 7 being a reminder of the seven days in a week that repeat over and
In the mother’s mind, her son plays a larger role than herself as the most important person in her life. This is shown by the first word of the poem, “He” (1), that is set off from the rest of the line by a comma. It is almost as if the mother is calling to a god, and that god is her son. The reader will be drawn to the first two stanzas, where the mother recrea...
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, / And bathed rose petal sweet, / And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, / And white shoes on her feet” (5.17,18,19,20). Randall wants us to picture the girl as delicate, innocent, and pure as possible. The image of the young girl is meant to be carried on until the end of the poem where the mom pulls the daughter’s shoe from the rubble. Randall also uses a metaphor in this stanza. He describes her hair as “night-dark hair” (5.17) which is comparing the girl’s hair to the color of night-time. In stanza 8, when Randall writes “she clawed through bits of glass and brick” he literally means the mother dug through the wreckage to find her daughter, but the “bits of glass” could also be a metaphor, comparing the girl to glass. The young girl is fragile, and when the bomb exploded, her delicate life was shattered, just like the
Then is says “leaving its Black tire prints on my foot” (I’m not sure, this is my guess) I believe this might be a metaphor for a bruise that she has on her foot from the man in her bad relationship(stanza 2 line 1). The next lines “and old images, the sound of banging screen/ doors on hot/ afternoons and a fly buzzing over the Kool-Aid spilled on/ the sink/ flicker, as reflections on the metal surface” this is still more of a dark, angry tone that were used in the previous lines(stanza 2-7 lines 1). These lines are just more examples of her bad
In 1902, Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri to his parents who eventually divorced and caused Hughes to live with his grandmother. His grandmother lived in Lawrence, Kansas, where he mainly grew up. Langston’s grandmother shared many stories with him as a young boy, about his family in the slavery days and how they had to fight for their freedom and how to end slavery. His grandmother introduced him to the "Bible" and "Crisis," the magazine. From stories told by his grandmother, it filled him with pride of who he was and his race. He then grew more into an interest in African American culture and history that he later wrote in many stories, autobiographies, histories, and poems.Hughes grandmother a few years later died, which resulted in him to live with family friends. This horrific event influenced him to take a stronger take on writing. It gave him more reason to write beautiful pieces in remembrance of his grandmother. It gave him the chance to shape his mind into a poetic state.
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.