American poet Langston Hughes' poetry focused on race-related issues of his era in language that was readily accessible to his readers. His poetry reflects a love of humanity together with race pride and bitterness over the treatment of African Americans. The poem "Mother to Son" contains all these elements. It is both a poem of racial protest and racial affirmation. Above all, the poet speaks for life and hope.
The poem is written in the first-person, and the narrator's voice is that of a mother passing onto her son both the knowledge and the lessons she has learned in life. Her motivation is to initiate her son in the realities of life, as well as her philosophy of life. Hughes uses the poetic device of the dramatic monologue that is a poem written as a speech made at some decisive moment in life. The mother/narrator's purpose is to instruct and to inspire. Her purpose is to teach her son to keep things in perspective in spite of difficulties. No matter how many hardships are encountered in life, she tells her son to keep working to accomplish his goals:
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard" (lines 14-16).
She offers up her own life as an example. The poem is built around metaphors, and the major metaphor is that life is a staircase that can be hard or easy to climb. For the mother, and by implication for all poor African Americans plagued by blatant discrimination as well as poverty, that staircase is shoddy and dangerous. There are "tacks in it/And splinters/And boards torn up/ And places with no carpet on the floor--/Bare" (lines 3-7). It's no "crystal stair," an image of smoothness, beauty and ease in climbing. Since the content and themes of Hughes' poetry centered on the African American experience, it may be assumed that the grit and courage of the matriarch figure, as well as her hurt, sorrow and hint of anger, is based on her experiences as a victim of
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