Mother to Son

"MOTHER TO SON" OF LANGSTON HUGHES

"Mother to Son" of Langston Hughes is my favorite. What the mother in the poem tries to tell her son is that there will be many rough roads that he has to go by in his life but she hopes that he will not give and complete it like his mother.

Through the dialect that Hughes used in his poem, we can see that the mother was not a well educated woman by the way she talks "there ain't" (13) and some grammar mistakes. She was living a poor area with "boards torn up" (5), "no carpet on the floor" (6). All these made the mother more real in a real life. Hughes used metaphor in his poem to show us that the mother didn't have a smooth life by "life for me ain't been no crystal stair." (2,20) She must have had rough times during her life and told her son that life is not that easy, smooth but she overcame it with "I'se been a-climbin' on" (9), "I'se still goin" (18) in order for him to be prepared for whatever good or bad happens to him and he should not give up. Even though there were many difficulties in her life but she always tried to go on. She must have had tried her best and some time in her life she did stop and rest with "reachin' landin's" (10) and go to different direction "turnin' corners" (11) and didn't know where she was at and what she had to do in a bad situation with "sometimes goin' in the dark" (12), " where there ain't been no light" (13). Despite all that, she was still going on. The mother in the poem seemed to know what her son was going through and tried to get him ready and encourage him not to give up "don't you set down on the steps" (15), "don't you fall now" (17) when he had difficulties "cause you finds it's kinder hard" (16) because his mother didn't do that. She knew that life is not smooth but she was strong enough to go on and hoped that her son would do the same thing, continue his life and never give up.

I find a good lesson for me in this poem that we should keep going on even though we might have rough experiences sometimes in our lives and never give up.