32 pages • 1 hour read
Langston HughesMother to Son
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Form & Meter
“Mother to Son” is a single stanza, free verse poem with no set meter, which creates a loose and conversational rhythm to the poem reflecting the conversation the speaker is having with her son. The varying line lengths, with a few particularly long lines and a few exceedingly short ones, emphasize the conversational tone. While there is no apparent rhyme scheme, a few subtle and slant rhymes like “stair” (Line 2) and “Bare” (Line 7), or “dark” (Line 12) and “hard” (Line 16) also reinforce the rhythm of the poem, giving it a lyrical quality. The distinctive rhythm, aided by a subtle rhyme scheme and varying line lengths, gives the poem a musical beat, reminiscent of Hughes’s development of jazz poetry a few years later. Even this early work hints at the influence of jazz and the artistic movements that were emerging from the Harlem Renaissance. The poem opens and closes with the same sentiment, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” on Lines 2 and 20. The single stanza embodies the single-mindedness of the speaker and her philosophy: There are no breaks on the stairs. It is one single perpetual climb.
Colloquial Speech
“Mother to Son” is an example of a dramatic monologue where the poet takes on the voice or identity of another person. In this case, that person is a Black mother speaking to her son. Hughes uses colloquial speech to capture the speaker’s personality and characteristics, as well as her culture and heritage. The contractions and abbreviated words as well as the non-traditional grammar and verb tenses is an example of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a valid form of English used within Black communities in the United States. The syntax and diction are key identifying details; without knowing who Langston Hughes was or what his writing was typically concerned with, it is the colloquial speech, or the AAVE, that contextualizes the speaker as being African American, as it is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the poem. The language or dialect spoken by any particular group is intrinsically valuable and demonstrates shared history, culture, and heritage. The poem’s cultural diction celebrates the shared vernacular of the Black community and highlights the intimate connection and understanding between the speaker and her son.
Enjambment
The majority of the lines in Hughes’s “Mother to Son'' are end-stopped, meaning that a sentence or a phrase comes to an end at the end of any particular line, typically indicated by some kind of punctuation. An example of the end-stops in the poem are the first two lines, “Well, son, I’ll tell you: / Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Lines 1-2). Both of these lines end with some form of punctuation to indicate a breath, pause, or conclusion. However, the poem has three enjambed lines. The enjambment is intentional, as it calls attention to specific moments that express despair or anxiety. In Line 8, the first instance of enjambment occurs when the speaker discusses her perpetual climb, “But all the time / I’se been a-climbin on”; both the lines’ content, as well as their enjambment, emphasize the continuous movement with no time for a pause. The second instance comes when she describes the times she had to venture blindly into the unknown, “And sometimes goin’ in the dark / Where there ain’t been no light” (Lines 12-13). The example demonstrates the speaker’s worries or fears about her son, “Don’t you set down on the steps / ‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard” (Line 15-16). The enjambment creates momentum, emphasizing the worries and fears the speaker carries with her on this strenuous climb.
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By Langston Hughes
