Posted: August 29th, 2022

Mother to Son

Langston Hughes’s poem entitled “mother to Son” is a poem of nurturing, love, and discussion of thoughts. The mother as the narrator of the poem shares her thoughts about life. She said that life is not an easy journey.  She relates her life to a stair, which was not a crystal or a beautiful and genuine gem. As what she is trying to tell her son, life is a never-ending journey with full of mysteries, fear, struggle, pain, success, and meaning. The mother saw her child giving up on something so she told him not to think about the negativities for it was the challenge of living.
From the beginning of the poem, the narrator already took place as the authority and judge. As she stated her case, she already concluded many things around her journey and life. However, every insight that was imposed as personal justifications by using the words “for me”. It means that the conclusion is an opinionated discussion. Everything is logical but deep. The narrator reaches her hand towards her son as she wanted him to become a better person like the way she treated her life during her childhood until she became an adult. Her transition from being a soft-spoken mother to an imposer and going back to a nurturing and loving mother is a also a significant idea within the poem as she used the word “son” in the beginning, “boy” in the middle and “honey” in the latter part of the poem.
The word “son” showed her literal relationship with her child. As she used the word “boy” it shows that the narrator became an imposer, but as she went used the word “honey” she imposed a more intimate relationship with her child – her love, nurturance and acceptance of her son’s weakness. Through this, the relationship of mother and child became an educator and student relationship but soon goes to a more intimate relationship that moulds the mother and the son to be intact.

In terms of the symbolisms, elements, and images within the poem, the author used the images that can be seen within the house such as carpet, stair, and floor. It shows the true essence of motherhood because literally or logically speaking, mothers are made to nurture the home and the family. By looking or analyzing the images alone, it can be seen that narrator is a woman or a mother to be specific because it embossed the responsibilities of a woman within the house.
There are also ironies within the poem such as dark and light, climbin’ and landin’, and fall and climb. The author showed a balance justification of strength and weakness towards the mother’s personality showing that she was not a perfect person, but trying to become a better one for her child. The author succeeds his attempt to incorporate both negative and positive aspects of life, which is a sensitive issue especially if a child is part of the situation. His attack was simple but complete. He stated everything a mother and child should know within a short poem that distinguishes him to become an effective moralist poet.
The passage “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” was the main thesis of the poem. At the end of the narrator’s discussion, she showed in what she is trying to say about life by restating the main argument of the poem. This attack shows her responsibility to give her child a goof faith or belief how life is going to be as he went to his own journey. She pushed her son to climb the stair without thinking of the negative aspects of life but always on the positive side of everything because negativities are part of life but it was not the only reason for living.
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Hughes, Langston. Mother to Son. (n.d.) 5 December 2007. <http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/matoson.html

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