Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Entry 8- Mother To Son, by Langston Hughes

Mother To Son, by Langston Hughes is a really deep poem. As everyone reading this knows, it is a poem written from a mothers perspective giving advice to her son. The beginning of the poem is about the mothers experience with life, and the end of the poem is the advice to the son, which to sum up, is to "never give up." Mother to Son is full of metaphors, but the most important metaphor is the comparison of life to a staircase. The first line of the poem is "Well son, I'll tell you: life for me ain't been no crystal stair." I believe the the crystal stair represents a perfect life, one with no flaws or challenges. I believe that what makes up a good life is the challenges, the flaws. A perfect life would be, well, no fun. No one has a perfect life. Langston Hughes goes on to say "it had tacks in it, and splinters, and places with no carpet on the floor, bare." I really like this part of the poem. It is basically saying "my life has had it's challenges, and it's hard times." The next part of the poem is where the mother says "but all the time I's been a-climbin' on.." which I think means "I have never given up."
Overall, I believe that Mother to Son is saying "Life has been hard for me, but I never gave up on it, I kept on going, and so should you, because waiting for your problems to solve themselves will only make things worse. Just keep on living your life."

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