Although the poem in “Mother to Son” and “If I can stop from breaking” both narrators have a hard life and use it to teach others a lesson, they both use figurative language to demonstrate a great of integrity, however, the lesson they taught is not the same. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” No matter how hard it is, it’ll get better. It’s not perfect, maybe not even close, but it gets better. The narrators in “Mother to Son” and “If I can stop from breaking” both have a quite difficult life. A quote from the poem “Mother to Son” can show it, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”(Langston Hughes). “Crystal stair” means easy and beautiful life, but life for her is not easy. Nevertheless, in “If I can stop one heart from breaking” the narrator said “I shall not live in vain”(Emily Dickinson). It shows the narrator does not want to waste her life. She wants to live her life selflessly and help others. It means the life for her feels empty and feels useless. As a result, they both use their life and their experience as a perfect example to teach others a lesson. …show more content…
They both have repetition, “I shall not live in vain.”(Emily Dickinson) This sentence has appeared a lot. Also, symbolism, “Crystal stairs” for an easy life, “Splinters, tacks, and boards” represent the struggle and difficulties of life, it also has the allusion of Jacob's Ladder. Furthermore, “Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again” is the example of metaphor, a fainting robin is just like a helpless person who is in
She was merely teaching her son a lesson, or maybe she was scolding him, and using that as a life lesson. Either way, she was the inspiration for the poem. I was unable to locate online the reason that the poem was initially written - however, I can only assume that he is remembering a time when his mother was right, and he’s wishing he had listened. Maybe he is now older, wiser, and faced with a decision where he wants two things equally, and needs to make a decision.
He focuses on that in both poems. Strength is an important aspect in anyone’s life, because without strength one cannot succeed in life. Since the dawn of time African-Americans have been blazing through pain to survive. Strength is extremely noticeable in Mother to Son. The whole poem is based on her strength and courage to endure all her trials and tribulations with grace.
The mother and daughter have a very distant relationship because her mother is ill and not capable to be there, the mother wishes she could be but is physically unable. “I only remember my mother walking one time. She walked me to kindergarten." (Fein). The daughter’s point of view of her mother changes by having a child herself. In the short story the son has a mother that is willing to be helpful and there for him, but he does not take the time to care and listen to his mother, and the mother begins to get fed up with how Alfred behaves. "Be quiet don't speak to me, you've disgraced me again and again."(Callaghan). Another difference is the maturity level the son is a teenager that left school and is a trouble maker. The daughter is an adult who is reflecting back on her childhood by the feeling of being cheated in life, but sees in the end her mother was the one who was truly being cheated. “I may never understand why some of us are cheated in life. I only know, from this perspective, that I am not the one who was.” (Fein). The differences in the essay and short story show how the children do not realize how much their mothers care and love
Wasley, Aidan. "An overview of “Mother to Son”." Poetry for Students. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.
staying the course. In the poem “Mother to Son” a mother tells of her persistence through life’s obstacles, encouraging her son not to give up.
Imagine you were the rose trying to grow in concrete; would you have made it out or die trying or maybe you just gave up. So think about it, what would you have really done? The poem “The Rose that Grew from Concrete” is about a rose that grew in concrete a metaphor that shows that you have to get past your problems to succeed. And the poem “Mother to Son” is about a mother explaining how hard life is a metaphor. Both poems share the theme of You have to rise above the obstacles, but the way the authors developed the theme was similar and different.
A mother’s love is said to have power beyond this world. This is seen throughout popular culture as well. For example, in Harry Potter, Harry is protected from Voldemort’s spells at birth by the power of his mother’s love. But can a mother’s love be heard, felt, and embraced in the physical world, even after a mother has passed away? In Stephen Wagner’s article “Mothers' Messages from Beyond,” Wagner writes about the accounts of real people who claim they have felt the presence of their mother’s in some way after their passing. The article includes five personal accounts from other people, along with Wagner’s own personal experience. The supernatural accounts vary anywhere from hearing whispers, seeing apparitions, and even seeing the deceased in one’s dreams. Through the use of emotional stories, pathos, and personal experience, Stephen Wagner tells the stories of mothers reaching out to their children beyond the grave in “Mothers' Messages from Beyond,” to convey a message that even in death, a mother’s loving words can be felt by the living.
This is shown through the tone changing from being disappointed and critical to acceptance and appreciative. The speaker’s friend, who after listening to the speaker’s complaints, says that it seems like she was “a child who had been wanted” (line 12). This statement resonates with the speaker and slowly begins to change her thinking. This is apparent from the following line where the speaker states that “I took the wine against my lips as if my mouth were moving along that valved wall in my mother's body” (line 13 to line 15). The speaker is imagining her mother’s experience while creating her and giving birth to her. In the next several lines the speakers describe what she sees. She expresses that she can see her mother as “she was bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then bearing down, pressing me out into the world” (line 15 to line 18). The speaker can finally understand that to her mother the world and life she currently lived weren't enough for her. The imagery in the final lines of this poem list all the things that weren’t enough for the mother. They express that “the moon, the sun, Orion cartwheeling across the dark, not the earth, the sea” (line 19 to 21) none of those things matter to the mother. The only thing that matter was giving birth and having her child. Only then will she be satisfied with her life and
Whenever someone mentions the word “mother”, one always tend to think of a very kind and caring figure who always whishes the best for her children. In the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Huges, a mother is telling her son about the obstacles she had to overcome in order to get to the position she is in right now. There comes many moments in our life when we just want to give up and let fate handle everything. We face many difficulties that may not seem we can overcome but we should never give up right away. The mother in the poem is trying to convince her son to keep pushing and at the same time she is trying to set an example though her own past experience.
In For My Mother: May I Inherit Half Her Strength, Goodison publicizes the private issue of her parents’ less-than-perfect marriage, and, in turn, unfolds a powerful dialectic on female self-sacrifice and subjectivity. She wonders at the prolonged strength of her mother- a woman who, regardless of being the victim of an unfaithful marriage, neither confronts nor flees her fate. And at the core of Goodison’s poem is her own conflicted decision, as the female product of this union, to define her mother’s attitude as unwavering strength, worthy of reverence, or as passivity, masked by nonchalance. The title of this work illustrates this ambiguity: does the clause “may I inherit half her strength”, translate into “may I be permitted - by the same mysterious influence that affected my mother - to remain strong just like her” or “may I never allow myself to be quite as tolerant as she was.”
"Two Kinds" by Amy Tan is about the intricacies and complexities in the relationship between a mother and daughter. Throughout the story, the mother imposes upon her daughter, Jing Mei, her hopes and dreams for her. Jing Mei chooses not what her mother wants of her but only what she wants for herself. She states, "For, unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could be only me" (Tan 1). Thus this "battle of wills" between mother and daughter sets the conflict of the story.
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.
She only allows her to see her worth in having a clean home and a satisfied man. She never once tells the girl to follow her dreams or even talk about what they are. The mother only keeps on instructing her on even the simplest things like smiling : “...this is how you smile to someone you don 't like too much;this is how you smile at someone you don 't like at all;this is how you smile to someone you like completely...” this poem is filled with the phrases “this is how”. “ don’t do this”, and “ be sure to..” the speaker does not even give the girl a chance to speak her mind or form her own thoughts. The young girl was only able to get one sentence out the whole poem : “...but what if the baker won 't let me feel the bread?”
Being a parent comes with a lot of responsibility and difficult decision making. You always have your child's best interest at heart, but sometimes your child may disagree with the rules you have set down. That is why, I believe, the perfect parenting style is democratic. You can compromise with your child, but still have basic rules you want them to follow, without them feeling targeted or that you are being unfair. When i become a parent, I want to make sure my children have guidelines. I want them to be able to make their own mistakes and learn from them. Their health, their type of entertainment and the toys they play with are three major, broad categories that I would like to have a say in, along with their input of course.
In the novel, Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence, the protagonist, Paul Morel, represented the epitome of the phrase “mama’s boy.” Mrs. Morel was very demanding, and smothered Paul to the point where he felt it was wrong to love anyone else but her. Paul’s disturbing infatuation with his mother became an obstacle in what could have blossomed into successful relationships with two very important women in his life, Miriam and Clara.