Mother to Son

In "Mother to Son," Langston Hughes uses an extended metaphor of a staircase to represent life's struggles, employing vivid imagery, such as "tacks" and "splinters," to convey hardships. The poem...

In Langston Hughes' poem "Mother to Son," the central symbolism and theme revolve around the metaphor of a staircase, representing life's struggles and perseverance. The mother contrasts her...

In "Mother to Son," "landing" symbolizes moments of rest and calm in life, while "corners" represent changes and new directions. The mother uses these metaphors to encourage her son to persevere...

The tone of Langston Hughes's poems "Mother to Son" and "The Negro Mother" is encouraging and resilient. Both poems feature strong, maternal figures who impart wisdom and perseverance to the next...

The extended metaphor in "Mother to Son" compares life to a staircase. The mother describes her life as a difficult, unending climb up a "crystal stair," filled with tacks, splinters, and torn...

The themes of the poem "Mother to Son" are hard work, perseverance, and love. The poet communicates these themes by using an extended metaphor, in which the eponymous mother describes her life as a...

The poem "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes employs sound devices like consonance and anaphora, and figures of speech such as metaphors and visual imagery. Consonance appears in repeated sounds like...

In "Mother to Son," Langston Hughes's use of vernacular language and free verse allows the mother's voice to resonate vividly, adding authenticity to her story. Her life, symbolized by a difficult...

The poem "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes is written in free verse, featuring one stanza of twenty lines without a unifying rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. The poem uses the metaphor of a...

The "crystal stair" in Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son" symbolizes an easy and luxurious life, which contrasts with the speaker's rough and challenging experiences. The mother uses this symbol to...

In "Mother to Son," Langston Hughes uses onomatopoeia with words like "splinters," which mimics the sharp snap of breaking wood, illustrating life's unexpected pains. Assonance appears in phrases...

In "Mother to Son," the mother teaches her son to persevere despite life's challenges. She advises him not to turn back, sit down, or fall, using her own struggles as an example. Her life has been...

In "Mother to Son," the speaker compares her life to a climb up a difficult and broken staircase. This metaphor suggests her life has been filled with obstacles like tacks, splinters, and torn-up...

The poem "Mother to Son" is not strongly characterized by alliteration or rhyme. Arguably, "stair" rhymes with "bare" several lines later, and there is some alliteration: for example, with "Bare /...

Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son" exhibits modernist characteristics through its use of symbolism and free verse. The poem uses symbols like the "crystal stair" to represent wealth and luxury,...

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...

Langston Hughes uses unconventional grammar and drops the ending of words to craft the voice of a Black mother who is giving her son some much-needed advice about persevering through life's...

The stairway in "Mother to Son" is difficult to climb because it symbolizes the mother's challenging life journey. Described as "no crystal stair," it is fraught with tacks, splinters, torn boards,...

The conflict in "Mother to Son" is laid out in the opening lines: "life ... ain't been no crystal stair." The conflict is between the mother, the protagonist, and her difficult life. The rising...

In "Mother to Son," she is telling her son about her life in this way in order to encourage him to keep going and overcome the obstacles that he is facing. By sharing her hardships with him, she...

Langston Hughes characterizes the mother in "Mother to Son" as a resilient and caring figure through the use of an extended metaphor and dialect. The metaphor of "the crystal stair" highlights her...

The event which the speaker refers to at the poem's start is her son's unheard side of this conversation. The mother opens by responding to some conflict which her son has come to her about, and this...

The speaker's purpose in "Mother to Son" is to encourage her son to persevere through life's hardships. She uses an extended metaphor, comparing life to a challenging staircase, to illustrate the...

The speaker in "Mother to Son" is a mother addressing her son, using the metaphor of a staircase to describe her challenging life journey. She recounts facing numerous obstacles, such as tacks and...

The poems "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes and "Advice to My Son" by Peter Meinke are both about advice that parents give to their children. However, the advice in Hughes's poem has to do with...

The best explanation for the significance of the staircase in the poem is option A. The narrator describes a tiring climb up a beat-up staircase, symbolizing her persistence through difficulties and...

In "Mother to Son," the mother advises her son to persevere despite life's hardships. She uses the metaphor of a difficult staircase to illustrate the obstacles she has faced, emphasizing that life...

The speaker in "Mother to Son" has responded to her life experiences with perseverance and determination. Using the metaphor of a staircase, she describes her life as difficult and filled with...

The poetic voice in "Mother to Son" is that of a concerned mother who speaks candidly and lovingly to her son about the hardships of life. She shares her own difficult experiences to teach him about...

"Mother to Son," a poem by Langston Hughes, reflects the challenging conditions for Black Americans during both the 1920s and mid-1900s. The 1920s saw the rise of the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age,...

In "Mother to Son," the speaker, a mother, does not give up when life becomes challenging. She shares her experiences of perseverance despite a difficult life marked by racial and socio-economic...