Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son" Poem Analysis

During the 1920’s, African Americans were greatly discriminated against, leading them into a life of poverty and limited possibilities in the world. Langston Hughes was a poet who wrote of their struggles during the Harlem Renaissance, which was the flourishing of African American art and literature in numerous American cities, especially Harlem, in the 1920’s. Hughes wrote many pieces of literature about the hard work African Americans would accomplish, only to be disadvantaged by the color of their skin. One of these pieces of literature was “Mother To Son,” a poem of an African American mother telling her son to strive and power through the prejudice and the obstacles it would bring. In “Mother To Son,” Hughes, from the poetic devices used, argues that people will face problems and hardships throughout their life that they will have to overcome because life does not stop even if someone is struggling. This is ‘Mother to Son’ analysis essay in which this poem is reviewed. 

A person will go through many tough times and difficult troubles throughout their life because no one’s life is perfect and it is how life works. In this poem, the mother tells her son that she had to “sometimes [go] in the dark/Where there ain’t been no light”. Hughes uses symbolism to demonstrate that the “dark” this mother has gone through is actually the hardships she has experienced in her life. This mother is just like any other person, so her having problems in her life means everyone else does too. Also in the poem, the mother explains how she has “been a-climbin’ on,/And reachin’ landin’s,/ and turnin’ corners”. By using symbolism again, the continuous climbing and turning of corners the mother describes tells of how her life was not one straight way up and has instead been a trudgingly fluctuating path towards an ending point, death, in which obstacles along the way make the incline neither perfectly linear nor one set slope. She has been through multiple misfortunes and still has many to come, just like everyone else has had and will have. Everyone has to advance past misfortunes that they encounter.

People must endure the problems they face during their lifetime because they have to keep moving forward since life does not just stop whenever one of these problems come up. In “Mother To Son,” the mother refers to her life as “no crystal stair./It’s had tacks in it,/And splinters,/And boards torn up,/And places with no carpet on the floor-/Bare”. This use of a metaphor brings in the idea that the mother’s life has not been a crystal stair, one that is transparent and pretty, meaning the life represented by this staircase was not difficult to live through and was given anything the person wanted with ease. Instead, the staircase representing the mother’s life is one with tacks and splinters in it, with some parts not having carpet or safe flooring, meaning it is not very pretty and shows signs of weariness. By the visual of her staircase, her life has not been easy, and she has had to go through many difficulties throughout her life to get where she is now. Although her staircase has not been an easy incline, she endured the problems she has faced because her staircase continues to go up and up, and she can not stop the rise of her staircase because it can not be stopped by anything other than death. In the poem, the mother’s advice lets the son know not to “turn back./[Not to] set down on the steps/’Cause [he] finds it’s kinder hard./[Not to] fall now”. This quote goes along with the metaphor of the staircase as the quality of someone’s life, in which someone can not stop when things get too hard because again, life does not stop for someone. If the son encounters a problem, he can not set down on the “steps,” or stop to deal with it because he has to find a solution to fix it while he is still living in the other parts of his life, or continuing to climb or go up his “staircase.”

In conclusion, Langston Hughes, in “Mother To Son,” explains that because life does not wait on someone, people will have to power through the difficult situations they run into throughout the span of their life using poetic devices. People will definitely have to deal with problems, either big or small, that comes up even during their normal or usual lifestyle, and find a way to conquer through. Nonetheless, what they do with or in their life, there will always be issues coming up in people’s lives that have to be endured and pushed through. Someone can not just stop to deal with these problems, but must find a way to find a solution at the same time as living through everything else.