Poetry is the kind of verbal art that allows to express all the profundity of the genuine ache of the heart within a very little amount of space. Very often, even having seen nothing but the title, the reader feels that this particular poem will resonate with his or her feelings and bring about sublime aesthetic and moral experience. In my reader's experience, this was the case of the poem Mother to Son by Langston Hughes published in 1922. Even without reading the body of the poem, I became aware of the intense emotions it carried. My initial impression drawn from the title alone was not deceived by the verse's contents. The poem is a revelation of a mother to her son about the hardships of her life. Through the powerful allegory of life as stairs, the narrator retells her son that her life was full of hardships and problems, but she always found strengths to overcome them and keep going, and cautions her child not to be idle, but work towards going upwards in life as well. The poem impresses by the profundity of its message expressed in very simple terms, like all messages worth hearing really are.
The style of the poem contributes greatly to the overall effect which its main message has on the reader. The verse is organized in a single strophe containing twenty lines. Usually, one line contains several words, sometimes a whole clause, but there are instances when it contains only one word, such as in the following example: “And places with no carpet on the floor - / Bare” (Hughes). The poem in question has one engaging trait regarding the transition from line to line: there is no such transition because the lines are short and one long sentence is usually broken into several lines. For instance: “It's [the stairs] had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor – Bare” (Hughes). This approach adds a powerful effect to the whole verse: it is not seen or heard as a narrative, but said basically in one breath, like indeed a mother would talk to her son. There is no artificial solemnity in this poem – just the flow of simple life truths a caring and loving mother makes sure to pass on to her beloved child. The absence of rhyme also contributes to this effect. One could say that Mother to Son is a blank verse; however, it is also important to notice that, apart from the absence of the rhyme pattern, each line of the poem in question contains different number of syllables. Thus, Mother to Son qualifies as a free verse. This form supports greatly the contents it expresses: unlike a poem of a traditional form, that is with rhyme and rhythm patters, free verse is very close to the natural flow of speech. The main message of Mother to Son does not need any artificially created verbal music, because it is a simple down-to-earth life lesson a mother seeks to teach her child. The language of the poem suits it as an artistic whole. Hughes uses simple everyday words and organizes them in simple syntactic structures. It is important to notice that the syntax of the poem does not correspond to the grammatical rules, but is rather of spoken language, for instance: “Life for me ain't been no crystal stair” (Hughes). What catches the reader's attention is that the author uses “ain't” instead of “hasn't”, as the codified norms of the language would suggest. This sentence also contains double negation, which is not appropriate in the classic English grammar, but is often used in current speech. The author's language pattern in this poem allows to infer the economic class of the narrator and thus the kinds of hardships she might have gone through, thus tapping into the reader's imagination. The poem is an allegoric story about the hard life a woman went through; the narrative arc has two points – the narrator's own path and the lesson she gives to her child based on it.
The major theme of the poem is the passing of the elders' life experience to the next generation. The title of the verse “Mother to son” suggests the poems theme, and it is clear that what is said is not something trivial and mundane. The body of the poem reveals that, indeed, the issue discussed there is of a great importance, for it deals with passing the experience from the older generation to the younger generation. The narrator not only recounts her life, but teaches her son how to support her: “So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard” (Hughes). Though the theme mentioned above is the most conspicuous, the reader might infer other themes based on the linguistic traits of the poem and the background of the author. Langston Hughes is an African-American poet who was one of the most prominent figures in Harlem Renaissance. At the time when the poem was published, African-Americans, like many other non-white ethnic groups, where unjustly discriminated. There is no mentioning of the narrator's race in the poem, but the historical context might suggests that the difficulties the she went through in her life might have been connected to the unjust and cruel treatment of people of non-white ethnicity in the society where while males were dominant. Thus, one can say that Mother to Son reveals the essence of racial discrimination issue without a single mentioning of race or any situation connected to discrimination. The depth of the reader's inference regarding this piece suggests a great mastery of the author.
Mother to Son contains very few literary devices; however, poetry is the case where quality should not be compensated by quantity. Nineteen out of twenty lines in the poem develop one allegory: the narrator compares her life to the stairs. As the poem progresses, the allegory of life as stairs is expanded and supplied with a lot of different meanings. For example, the narrator states that her life “ain't been no crystal stairs”, but “had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor” (Hughes). Tacks, splinters, and boards are construction materials. By including them in the poem, Hughes gives an impression that the narrator's life was something like a roughly and awkwardly constructed edifice. Tacks, splinters, and boards made it hard for the narrator to go up the stairs, hence they are metaphors for various kinds of hardships she went through. It is also important to notice the epithet “crystal” as it is used to counter the awkward edifice of the narrator's life. “Crystal” is something bright and unambiguous (as in the set expression “crystal clear”), but this is far from what the narrator's life has been. “Places with no carpet on the floor” make the reader think of rough splinters which hurt the bare legs of those walking on them. A “landing” is a metaphor for a place where one can rest a little from going up the stairs and also a some sort of a turning point after each flight of stairs. In the end of the poem, the narrator calls for support from her son because they have to go up the rough stairs of her life together, so he would not hold her back by “turning back” or “setting down on the steps” (Hughes). Thus, the allegory of life as stairs along with the other artistic components described above combines into a whole piece every element of which contributes to the major theme.
The issues evoked in Mother to Son by Langston Hughes resonate powerfully with several other pieces discussed in the class. First of all, this verse reminds greatly of Claude McKay's America. Written by a non-white poet and published roughly at the same time as Hughes' Mother to Son, McKay's America deals as well with the issue of hard life for discriminated ethnic groups in the early twentieth century American society. The same topics are evoked in Hughes' Weary Blues as well. Even though Hughes does not accentuate the issue of discrimination, only the life with hardships, some knowledge of the historical context allows the reader to see the discussed issues in a bigger picture.
The poem Mother to Son by Langston Hughes is a great example of thought-provoking and aesthetically appealing poetry. It contains just twenty lines and is built on a single allegory put in the free verse form, but the author made the graceful simplicity of the form the majestic attire of the sense.
Works Cited
Hughes, Langston. “Mother to Son”.
