Life isn't easy - "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes



 I chose the poem "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes to talk about in this blog post. 

Langston Hughes uses word choice and jargon to convey the theme that life isn't easy in this poem. First of all the narrator says her "life wasn't a crystal stair", comparing life to a crystal stair. The narrator, portrayed as a mother based on the title, explains to her son that life isn't straightforward and not always clear like a crystal. Then, she goes on to say that her stairs had "tacks", "splinters", "boards torn up" to further show the imperfect and unstable nature of life. Hughes uses these words to build his theme effectively and creates an informal and casual tone. Hughes maintains this style throughout the rest of the poem, through "a-climbin' on", "reachin' landin's", "turnin' corners" to further emphasize the hardships that come with life and that they just have to be overcome to keep moving forward. And sometimes there will be "dark" times with no "light" but you should keep going and don't ever sit on the steps or fall off. Hughes ends the poem by saying that the mother herself is still climbing the stairs, and reiterates at the very end that her "life hasn't been a crystal stair" either. 

Instead of directly talking about life, Hughes uses the analogy of stairs to describe life, and uses jargon and additional word choice to talk about what life has to offer and the hardships that are associated with life and talks about the mother's own life at the very end.

Comments

  1. shovik ahmedNovember 5, 2023 at 8:07 PM

    I like how you laid out the rhetorical devices you were going to unfold In that introductory sentence. it also helps that you deconstructed them both in their respective order, even with textual evidence to round it all out, even if it was just individual words.

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