Mother To Son By Langston Hughes Analysis

Langston Hughes was an African American author, poet, novelist, and playwright. His writings were known to explore the lives of African Americans who struggle with poverty and discrimination. One of his works entitled “Mother to Son”, was written and published in 1922. The writing selection was based off the theme of ‘When life gets hard; persevere,’ as a mother illustrates to her son the life long journey of struggles and conflicts that she has endured. The writer produced this poem at the age of 21, and in this particular poem, Hughes displays the symbol of a staircase which to represents life.
“Mother to Son” begins with a heed of warning from a mother to her son about how life will not be what he is going to expect. Mother states thus, “Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” The symbol of a crystal stair corresponds with an illusion that life is an easy journey. The regular description of a crystal stair would be seen as smooth, flawless, and attracting. The author use of a crystal stair is almost a foil to the mother’s stair. Further into the composition, the mother bare explains this: “It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare.”(Hughes, 3-7). The description of the staircase can be symbolized to show how the path towards her unacomplished personal victory contained numerous adversities. Each description of the flaws in her staircase represents a conflict that had arisen in her lifetime. Despite it, the mother chose to endure the struggle that developed from her choice. The path that the mother took could have been seen as an immediate defeat, and, consequently resulted to a satisfactory conclusion of where she

Mother describes how life shouldn’t be interpreted to be handed on a silver plate, but with hard work. The author portrays this symbol between conversation and