Discussion Topic

The extended metaphor in "Mother to Son."

Summary:

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 boards, symbolizing the hardships and obstacles she has faced. This metaphor encourages her son to persevere despite life's challenges.

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What is the extended metaphor in "Mother to Son"?

As explained in the previous two answers, an extended metaphor is a metaphor that is carried out through most or all of a literary work. In Langston Hughes's poem "Mother to Son," Langston Hughes compares a mother's lifetime of struggles to her courage to perceive. In the intro to the poem, the mother explains to her son,

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. Its had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up. And places with no carpets on the floor, bare.

The mother in the poem compares her life to all of the glorious things that it is not. She begins by comparing her life to crystal stairs. Crystal is seen as beautiful, pure, clear and valuable. The mother explains that her life is not any of these things. She also showcases her life as being bare, filled with splinters and torn up boards. But...

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Langston Hughes also shows this mother's refusal to give up and stop, and makes the case for fighting through even the unknown as seen below.

I'se still climbing on, and reachin landins, and sometimes, going in the dark where there ain't been no light.
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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 description of what life has been like for her and how it has been very challenging. Note how she introduces the extended metaphor in the following quote:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.

The extended metaphor is therefore that life is compared to a staircase that is not a "crystal stair" but a very rough and painful staircase that has made it hard to continue to go upwards. However, inspite of these difficulties and the "splinters" and lack of furnishings, the mother in this poem has continued to ascend that staircase, and she urges her son to do the same and follow her example even though life may not be a "crystal stair."

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A metaphor is a comparison that does not use the words like or as. The central metaphor in this poem is the staircase that the mother must climb, which is "no crystal stair" (staircase). The mother compares her life journey to a climb up a hazardous staircase.

The "crystal stair" is an allusion to Jacob's ladder in the biblical book of Genesis, a ladder Jacob dreamed of climbing to heaven. In the dream, God says to Jacob,

the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. (From Genesis 28:13, KJV)

In Hughes's hands, the stair one must climb in a life of toil is not a stairway to heaven. The mother, who is the speaker in the poem, contrasts the crystal stair to her own life journey. Her "staircase" has tacks and splinters, holes in the floor, and places where the carpet is missing. It is often dark on these stairs. Moreover, once you reach one landing, there is ahead of you another set of stairs to climb.

In other words, life for Black people, symbolized by this difficult staircase, is fraught with danger, uncertainty, and hard work. They are not promised, as Jacob is, that the land they live in will be their inheritance.

However, the mother advises her son that this more difficult stairway is no reason to give up on living. She tells him not to turn back or despair because life is hard. Instead, she encourages him to follow her example of courage and persistence and to climb the steps of life that he has been given.

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What is the extended metaphor in lines 2-7 of "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 addressing her "son," establishing the metaphor by telling him what her life was not, stating "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair" (2). The mother establishes the true metaphor as the exact opposite of a crystal stairway. She says that her life has "had tacks in it, / And splinters, / And boards torn up, / And places with no carpet on the floor- / Bare" (3-7). Thus, life is still compared to a stairway via metaphor, but the mother's "stairway" is broken, hazardous, and, in places, laid bare. She very clearly establishes that life has not been easy on her. However, despite her troubles, she expresses the firmness of purpose exhibited in much of Hughes's poetry by stating that she has "been a-climbin’ on, / And reachin’ landin’s, / And turnin’ corners" despite the difficulty of the climb (9-11). She has no plans to give up, nor does she want her son to "give up," "set down on the steps," or "fall now" on his own stairway, no matter how hard it may get to continue (14-17).

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