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Mother to Son
The language of Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son" is colloquial and informal. The poem does not have a formal structure. The language represents the rhythms and diction of actual speech. This...
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Mother to Son
The speaker, the poet's mother, compares her life to a climb up a hard set of stairs. It has been a treacherous climb, with tacks, and splinters, and places where the boards have been torn up....
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Mother to Son
First of all, it's important to note that the staircase is an allegory for the mother's life. An allegory is a literary device which is used to reveal a hidden message, meaning, or moral. In this...
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Mother to Son
In Langston Hughes’s poem “Mother to Son,” the speaker tells her son that life will be difficult, but he must keep going anyway. She explains that her life has been hard—“no crystal stair.” Her...
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Mother to Son
The speaker in “Mother to Son” is, unsurprisingly, a mother addressing her son. She begins by telling him about her life, using the metaphor of a flight of stairs. Her life has not been a crystal...
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Mother to Son
The person speaking in this poem is the poet's mother. Her purpose is to tell her son both that life will be a hard climb for him as a black man as it has been for her but that he should never give...
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Mother to Son
The lesson in "Mother to Son" is clearly stated, albeit as part of an extended metaphor. In the final third of the poem, the mother exhorts her son: So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down...
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Mother to Son
The answer is A: The narrator describes a tiring climb up a beat-up staircase, which represents her persistence through difficulties and challenges in life. The other options are incorrect...
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Mother to Son
The poem “Mother to Son” was published by the poet Langston Hughes in 1922. It is written from a mother’s perspective, as she tells her son about the struggles in life. She does so by comparing...
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Mother to Son
The speaker in this poem is the eponymous mother. The mother addresses the poem to her son and offers him advice as to how to live his life, based on her own life experiences. She tells her son...
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Mother to Son
The age of the son being addressed by his mother is never stated in this poem. However, we have clues that help us determine how old he is. For example, although she calls him "boy," the way she...
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Mother to Son
"Mother to Son" is narrated by the eponymous mother, who implores her son to work hard and persevere in his life no matter how difficult or hopeless it might sometimes appear to be. The mother...
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Mother to Son
The poems "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes and "Advice to My Son" by Peter Meinke are similar in that they both concern parents offering advice to their children. In Hughes's poem, the speaker...
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Mother to Son
"Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes is narrated by a mother who is advising her son about life's challenges. She shares her hard times and setbacks and encourages her son to continue climbing and...
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Mother to Son
"Mother" compares life to stairs, and contrasts her life (or stairs) against that of a "crystal stair," which, in this poem, becomes a symbol of luxury and ease. The smooth delicacy of crystal is...
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Mother to Son
An extended metaphor is a metaphor that is continued throughout the text, whose meaning is central to the understanding of that text. In this poem, the extended metaphor concerns the mother's...
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Mother to Son
I can't find any examples of similes in the poem; similes are where you compare two things using the words "like" or "as." Something very similar though, is a metaphor--it is the exact same thing,...
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Mother to Son
They both have a feeling of endurance and fortitude. Both poems are from the viewpoint of a mother, or of a strong black woman who has gone through a lot of trials. In "The Negro Mother" those...
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Mother to Son
Here is how I have annotated the poem, according to the question in my book, which asks: "How is the central metaphor of climbing stairs a particularly appropriate idea for conveying this poem's...
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Mother to Son
I encourage my students to use a pneumonic device, known as SPIT M & Ms, to analyze most poems. Here are the basics: Speaker: an African-American mother, probably a domestic, encouraging her...
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Mother to Son
In Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son" stairs are the central metaphor that conveys the poem's themes of generational sacrifice and maternal love. In terms of African American experience, the poem...
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Mother to Son
Langston Hughes uses a variety of poetic devices, or figurative language, in "Mother to Son" to characterize the mother as a hard-working, determined woman who cares deeply for her son. Extended...
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Mother to Son
In my mind, the most powerful element of Hughes' poem is the theme of struggle that seems to be passed down from one generation to another. A trademark of Hughes' poetry is that he conveyed an...
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Mother to Son
The poem “Mother to Son”, by Langston Hughes, is an uplifting, hopeful poem about never giving up. The main symbolism in the poem is when Mother compares her life to a staircase. She says, “Life...
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Mother to Son
The first factor affecting the difference between these two works is the circumstances of the authors. Hughes was born in 1902 and Meinke some thirty years later in 1932. Hughes was African...
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Mother to Son
The speaker in Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” represents a mature woman who imparts her wisdom to her young adult child. The speaker uses the extended metaphor of a staircase to represent...
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Mother to Son
Poetic voice is defined as the the imagined role an author assumes as the speaker of the poem. While it is easy to conflate the writer and the speaker as the same person, this is not always the...
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Mother to Son
In "Mother to Son," Langston Hughes gives a message of encouragement to black Americans struggling against poverty and racial injustice. The language of the poem and the free verse format...
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Mother to Son
What a wonderful poem. In Langston Hughes' poem, "Mother to Son," he adopts the voice of a mother speaking to her son about the hardships in life. The primary literary device used here is an...
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Mother to Son
One characteristic of modernist poetry is the use of symbolism. In "Mother to Son," the speaker uses lots of symbolism to convey her message to her son. For example, she tells her son twice that...
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Mother to Son
The purpose of the Langston Hughes poem "Mother to Son" is to illustrate, through narrative, the difficulties that previous generations of black people have endured, sometimes as a sacrifice to...
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Mother to Son
Langston Hughes' delightful poem "Mother to Son" compares life to a flight of stairs. The mother explains to her son that walking these stairs is not always easy. She explains that there are...
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Mother to Son
The terms "rising action" and "resolution" and "conflict" are normally used to analyze the plots of narrative works. Although Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son" is a relatively short poem, it does...
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Mother to Son
The tone of "Mother to Son" is didactic. A mother, after looking back at her life, wants her son to know that life is not easy or glamorous--it's not a "crystal stair." Instead, the mother/speaker...
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Mother to Son
This poem by Langston Hughes is another of his poems where he takes on the persona of a character that is unlike his own. Here, he is an African-American mother talking directly to her son; thus,...
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Mother to Son
The mother compares her life to a staircase filled with nails, broken boards, and missing boards. For her, life has not been easy. She sees her life as a struggle upwards, fighting against...
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Mother to Son
The mood of "Mother to Son" is one of optimism in the face of hardship and sadness. The poem starts off, it seems, on a note of resignation: Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no...
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Mother to Son
The poem uses an extended metaphor, dialect, and imagery to convey the theme that life is difficult, but you still have to be persistent and a hard worker. A metaphor is a comparison that is...
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Mother to Son
The whole theme of Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son" is that it is necessary to keep working hard, to keep climbing, in order to get ahead. The diction (choice of words) and imagery of the poem...
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Mother to Son
"Mother to Son" takes place around the mid-1900s. During this time, the civil rights movement was becoming apparent in the lives of Americans. Major events in the civil rights movement occurred...
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Mother to Son
Mother To Son is typical of what you would expect from such a title - a mother wanting to give her son the best advice based on her own experiences. The mother relates these experiences by...
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Mother to Son
Langston Hughes' poem "Mother to Son" contains no rhyme or alliteration. In fact, Hughes deliberately avoids such "prettifying" devices as pleasant rhyme schemes or alliterative devices to...
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Mother to Son
While the extended metaphor in Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son" is established in lines 2-7, it ends up being the central focus of the entire poem. The poem begins with a "mother" character...
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Mother to Son
In "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes, what is not being said holds as much significance as what the mother does tell the son. What the mother does say: Her own life has had its share of...