Processing Fear “F-E-A-R has two meanings: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise.’ The choice is yours.” -Zig Ziglar. How do we as humans face the emotion we call fear? Do we let it’s terrifying surface consume us and hold us back from partaking in something we wish to do, or do we let it fuel us, empower us, into doing something that we never thought we could? Do you hold yourself back and hide from that fear and hope it goes away just like the monsters under your bed, or do you take control, and fight? Maya Angelou talks about locking yourself up in a cage full of your fears and doubts and trying to escape and become free of your struggles. In Langston Hughes poem, “Mother to Son,” Hughes talks about how a son is struggling to go through life and he wants to give up because of his fears and doubts, but his mother is trying to persuade him into sticking with it and continue living life. Finally, Robert Frost discusses how your fears shouldn’t hold you back from continuing life and choosing a path to go on. Everyone has to face their fears at some point, it just depends on the person if they choose to fight it or not. Whether you're grabbing the bull by the horns, or you’re closing the gate. You’re looking your fear right in the face.
Imagine you’re in the cage, suffocating in your own doubts. You want to break down those barriers, but you can’t. Seeing the free people makes you want to escape even more, but again, you can’t. You let your fears tie you
The idea of fear is a fairly simple concept, yet it carries the power to consume and control lives. Fears have stemmed from an inadvertent psychological response to situations deemed threating to one’s personal safety, but have evolved into a complex web of often illogical misconceptions which are able to cloud a person’s judgment and result in situations often worse than originally intended. Fears can be hard to quell, but it has been shown the best way to overcome fears is often to face them, as author James Baldwin asserted when he wrote, “To defend oneself against fear is simply to insure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.” Baldwin makes strongly qualified statement, and his idea fears must be faced to
Fear is a worldwide, fundamental problem. Everyone has it, just maybe different levels than others. There are some people who can repress it more than others, or can be more afraid of different things. Fear is what drives us to do certain things. For example failure, we’re afraid to fail. We have an instinct because we are afraid to die, or afraid to get hurt, or afraid someone we love might get hurt. So fear can drive us to save the people we love, if they are close to dying, even if saving them could kill us as well. We can be afraid of failure in life so we keep going and keep pushing through the work. But there is the down side to fear, just as everything else. Fear can make us back down from a situation that could be good for us because we could be afraid of the unknown, which, in that situation, we would not want the fear with us. In Cry, the Beloved Country there’s this quote, “and now the fear is back again, the fear of the unknown,” (pg.44) and the first thing that popped into my head when I read that quote was, “when did the fear ever leave?” Because the thing is there is always fear no matter how hard you try to push it to the back of your
The poet, Langston Hughes, was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes’s grandmother was an activist for women’s education and rights. Both of Hughes’s parents were mulattos, meaning he had interracial maternal and paternal grandparents. Hughes writes about this situation in his poem titled, “Mulatto.” Hughes states things like “...a black mother and an uncaring white father” (Slovey and Howes 211). By using many writing styles and tools, Hughes gets his point across easier by making the reader feel like they’re in the moment of the poem. In Hughes’s poem, “Mother to Son,” a mother offers wisdom to her son and the younger generations using her way of language and old slang that connect them to each other’s life and hardships.
Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes wrote poems imparting to young people. Brooks encourages her audience to continue to trudge forward even if the situation is grim in the poem entitled “Speech to the Young. . .” The author stated, “Even if you are not ready for the day it cannot always be night.” The author is trying to say that one cannot always just wallow in their problems. Instead, on must overcome their hurdles no matter how high they may be. One must overcome their obstacles sooner or later because time does not stop for anyone. Hughes takes a parental stand in “Mother to Son” encouraging readers to persevere even when faced with adversity. The author advised, “So boy, don’t turn your back. Don’t you set down on the steps.” The author
In the poem “Mother to Son”, Langston Hughes uses the deep connection between a mother and her son and descriptive rhetoric to bring hope and inspire the African American people to fight for their rights.The author most likely wrote the poem for the African American audience because it is written in an African American slang during the Harlem Renaissance. However, any minority group can relate to this creation because it is about people who are going through a difficult time. Hughes describes the arduous reality of life; one in which people have to overcome challenges and face their worst fears in order to reach the top of the ladder. He is telling the African American people that they cannot give up during the hard times. Moreover, the author utilized the deep connection between a mother and her son to make the poem more dramatic. Since mothers are known to have a soft and caring voice towards their children. They traditionally will do anything for their kids. This drama appeals to the readers and gives them hope for the future. The future consists of fulfilling their American dream. The American cream stands for the idea that every person should have an equal opportunity to achieve prosperity and success through hard work and determination. Next, Langston Hughes hoped to encourage the African American people to fight for their rights. To drive his point home, the author described his journey through time in painstaking detail, which helps the readers connect to the
Adversity is a central component of every individual's life. It is the difficult situations that shape our identity and help us recognize who we are. Difficult situations have the ability to transform our perceptions and values of the world while morphing us into stronger and more confident individuals. However, it is when refuse to cope with our struggles ourselves and push the responsibility of solving our problems over to others that problems arise. When faced with adversity it is common for individuals to turn to their parents not hoping for, but expecting assistance. They do not face their own struggles and expect their parents to assist them in doing so. In the short story "Mother to Son" the author, Langston Hughes demonstrates the importance of individuals overcoming obstacles with little intervention from their parents in order for it to benefit them.
Reporter: Hi Mr Hughes, so I’ve learnt that recently one of your poems , “Mother To Son is published”. Congratulations, but besides from the blissful joy of happiness, can you share with us your feelings right now? Are we happy? Proud?
Life's Construction, Detour Ahead: An Explication of "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes Life, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Much like beauty, life requires constant maintenance; construction. According to some life is a "beautiful wondrous adventure". Unfortunately for oppressed people life is an utterly cruel joke.
The poet Langston Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, missouri to an African American family. Hughes later on, attending central high school in Cleveland, Ohio where he would excel in both academics and sports, however Hughes also wrote poetry and short fiction for the high school literary magazine he would also edit the yearbook. In 1921, he went on to Columbia university for a year before dropping out for a time he worked as a cabin boy on a merchant ship, visited Africa, and wrote poems for a number of American magazines. Mother to son was first published in the magazine crisis in December of 1922. The author Langston Hughes, who came from a struggling African American family was often criticized that he would never make it as a poet. The poem mother to son mostly relates to him and his family's
Langston Hughes was an immensely influential African American writer, novelist, and social activist before, after, and during the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes' primary themes of his works included African-American life, struggles, and experiences. Over the course of his literary career, he wrote about 384 poems. Hughes’ emotional and realistic poem Mother to Son, is one of my favorites. Langston Hughes created this poem based on personal experience and the general struggle for African Americans.
Langston Hughes' poem, "Mother to Son" uses diction, punctuation, and musical devices to express the theme. The author gives off beautiful diction to describe how her son thinks her life is a "crystal stair", however it's not. It's a torn up, broken staircase which her son would never realize. Her life isn't perfect, but she states "For I'se still goin', honey." This exemplifies that life isn't easy for everyone. There's always hardships that everyone has to face at some point, but you can't give up no matter how hard it gets.The punctuation that the author used isn't like your average English writing. Instead of the type of writing you would expect, the author uses words like "I'se" and "goin'" to make her voice come alive. When reading this
The poem, “Mother to Son” written by Langton Hughes held a great deal of significance for not only the lives of African-Americans but for anyone that losing sight of faith. Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes wrote “Mother to Son” when he was 21 years old. The poem was written in “black English” as a conversation between a mother and her son. This text matters because it represents so many different meanings of life and inspirational messages as it relates to the struggle of African-American women.
According to Biography, James Mercer Langston Hughes is considered to be an African American poet who is college educated and comes from a middle-class family (Langston Hughes Biography). He attended college in New York City and became influential during the Harlem Renaissance (Langston Hughes Biography). Although Hughes was a talented writer, he faced some challenges early on and it was stated that his “early work was roundly criticized by many black intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be an unattractive view of black life” (Langston Hughes. American Poet). They believed that his work helps the spread the stereotypes of African Americans. “Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations” (Langston Hughes. American Poet). Langston Hughes’s poems “The Negro Mother”, “Let America be America Again” and “The Weary Blues” were influenced by his life during the Harlem Renaissance and the racial inequality experienced in the late 1920s through the 1960s.
Mother to Son is a poem that was written by Langston Hughes, and was published in 1922. Throughout this poem, Langston Hughes portrays a mother speaking to her son and the readers to bestow her knowledge, encouragement and wisdom from the life that she lived.
Fear is the number one obstacle everyone must overcome at some point in their life. When the word fear is brought up I like to think of past situations that I experienced. There are many different methods used to conquer and learn from our fears such and exposure therapy, having a growth mindset, and thinking positive. For example, when I was younger fear was my worst enemy, School was the main reason that caused my fear. My fear of failure was my biggest obstacle growing up so I used that as a method to learn from my fears.