Mother To Son By Langston Hughes Analysis

“Mother to Son,” written by Langston Hughes, is a short poem about a mother who is teaching her son about perseverance and determination by using the image of a staircase. She explains that even though life has given her many hardships, she continues forward and she urges her son to do the same. In “Mother to Son,” Langston Hughes uses an extended metaphor, imagery, dialect, and structure to paint a picture of a weary mother who wants her son to persevere through the hardships of life.

In the poem, “Mother to Son” harlem renaissance Langston Hughes writes of a mother’s heartbreaking journey through a never ending cycle of life through the use of figurative language and complex structure. The reader is able to fully receive the message the author has provided.

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.

At times, our lives can be difficult, and in the poem Mother to Son by Langston Hughes he expresses this by using a mother giving her son advice about life. During this advice the author uses many different literary devices such as metaphors, imagery, and diction. He uses these devices to compare life to broken stairs, and how life can be challenging. As the mother says "Sometimes you just have to keep on going," and this Mother is right even though life is a little rocky time to time you cannot give cannot give up because if you give up on life, life will give up on you.

Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother To Son” is a twenty line poem that seems to be from the perspective of a prudent mother that is giving her son, and possibly the readers, some helpful and supportive advice, telling them that, no matter how many adversities they may face, they can not give up. I believe that this is the main theme of the poem, perseverance. “So, boy, don’t you turn back./ Don’t you set down on the steps./ ‘Cause you find it’s kinder hard./ Don’t you fall now-/ For I’se still goin’ honey,” (15-17). In these lines, the mother really drives the idea of diligence and perseverance to her son. Also, in these lines, it can also be seen just how much this mother cares for and loves her child. She advises him to emulate her in the sense that she hasn’t given up and he shouldn’t either, so that they may climb the battered staircase of life together. This causes the mood to be overall relatively jovial and hopeful.

“Mother to Son” is a story of Hughes’s mother teaching him a valuable message in life: to never give up and to never stop growing. Hughes’s mother not only tries to teach Hughes, but she also tries to express herself to him by telling him of the struggles in her life. Her imagery, metaphor, and word choice provide compelling points for Hughes to be successful in society.

The poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, is about Mother who uses stairs as a metaphor for the long climb through the daily struggles of life to her son. The primary theme of the poem is struggles of life and never giving up. With these themes Langston Hughes can tell a story about the mother will using a metaphor that anyone can understand and relate to. The symbolism in the story are while obvious are still effective at getting the themes and imagery across.

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 was a great part of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. He was a poet who wrote about life in America from a black person’s perspective. For the majority of his poems were written when he has at his worst which explains why nearly all of them are about pain and struggles. Furthermore, Mother to Son is a poem Hughes wrote about a mother who has already experienced life; she has gone through the roughest times but has maintained to stand tall. In the poem, the mother constantly tells her son that life will be tough, but giving up will only create a harder situation so he has to keep going just like she did.

In "Mother to Son," Langston Hughes stresses the concern and affection parents extend towards their children.

In order to impact her son with knowledge she refers to her own struggles and success in life. Langston used a number of metaphors to describe the challenges of life. During this essay I will highlight metaphors that were used in order to create an image of the kind of struggles the mother faced in life. Langston Hughes describes a strong mother talking to her son in the poem "Mother to Son”. This poem outlines the ideal woman providing her son with words of advice about life and challenges that he will face.

Stevie Wonder, whom was an American musician, once said, “Mama was a great teacher, a teacher of compassion, love, and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.” This quote by Stevie Wonder helps us understand the fact that mothers try, in the best ways, to see you succeed by teaching from the mother’s perspective and the experiences she has been through to get you to see the world in a different way. Just like the quote, in ‘Mother to Son’ we also see the emphasis on the teachings or life lessons of a mother and how the mother tries to make the son understand by teaching him that success is something you have to work for, just like the mother had to and still has to do in her life. In Langston Hughes’ ‘Mother to Son’ the poem portrays a mother who informs her son about the life she has lived along with the difficulties that she encountered and has overcame, hence the fact that she is telling her son. The mother explains to her son that despite the difficulties and challenges that come to you and are ahead of you in life, you must not give up because motivation and determination will push you through life, which is what becomes the overall theme of this poem.

Langston Hughes, author of the short story "On the Road" and the poem "Mother to Son," often illustrated in his writing the hardships experienced by the characters--products of African American life in the United States. While Hughes and other young African-American authors wanted to define and celebrate black art and culture, they were also responsible for changing the preconceived notions of most Americans' erroneous ideas of black life (Mabunda

Langston Hughes is a well-known author whose poems serve as a reflection of African Americans during the 1900s slavery period. In most of his poems, hardship occurs for the protagonist which is often resolved with a rewarding outcome. "Mother to Son" is an example of this message in which a mother explains the importance of persevering through the challenges her son may face in life. Through the use of dialect, symbolism, and anaphora, the author is able to argue his claim that persistence is needed in order to address the difficulties in life. Growing up in a poor family can lower the chances of living a successful life, especially when education is unable to be provided. Dialect is used to grab our attention by the many incorrect grammar