The Image of the Mother in Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son”

As a child of the early twentieth century, Langston Hughes endured trying times. Hughes and his buzz off lived most of their lives in poverty. As a young teen, Hughes began indite metrical compositions about the world he saw finished his eyes a world of racial segregation and prejudice. This was the basis of many of his poems, and it was these poems that allowed him to influence the Harlem Renaissance. To him the flesh of the African American family is centered on the capture.The mother is the point nearly whom everything about the family revolves. She is indeed the epitome of the African proverb or specifically the Akan proverb that says The death of a mother marks the end of unitarys family. It is this image that permeates through Langston Hughes poem, have to Son. Although sometimes the take whitethorn share this role that the mother plays in the African American family structure, as portrayed in for example the movie Pursuit of Happyness, it is kind of rare.Single pa renthood here is more often than non, about the mother who has been pushed into this terrible situation probably due to her husbands impri boyment for wholeness crime or the other, the sheer neglect of his family or his demise which faculty have been as a result of drug wasting disease or gun fights. A closer look at the poem reveals that in the African American family structure, not only is the mother mostly a single parent who is saddled with the financial burden of the family needs, save she is in addition a counsellor or a very strong motivational figure she uses her experiences in life to guide the fatherth of her children.In the poem Mother to Son just as the title suggests, it is a mothers advice to her son. The words of this poem offer strong encouragement and a sense of hope in a harsh world. Her words offer a positive expectation despite the difficult climb. At one point, the tone substitutes as it becomes a bit sarcastic she mentions that things get kinder (kin d of) hard, when actually it has been worse than she makes it sound. It appears as if she does not want her son to go steady so much of the bad, but to freely focus on what was yet to come.Life has not been a crystal footstep for her, yet suggesting to him that those difficulties are, if not ultimately surmountable, at least worth essay against and she is telling her son that it will not be easy for him either, but not to give up. Again, she is a disciplinarian and a pastor who ensures that her children grow both physically and spiritually into well accepted people in their society.She believes in the verse Trainup a child the elbow room he should go and when he is old, he will never run low from it. She does not spare the rod when it becomes necessary. After describing the staircase of her life, the mother addresses the son by saying that he should not sit down or fall down just because his staircase is hard to climb. In the mothers eyes, the son should never give up. Instea d he should see her as an example because it wasnt easy for her, but she never gave up. In the poem she says So boy, dont you turn back.Dont you dance band down on the steps Cause you finds its kinder hard. Dont you fall now ____ For Ise still goin, honey, Ise still climbin, And life for me aint been no crystal stairThe mother again is a teacher she trains her children even to the point of career choice. At only twenty years of age, Hughes wrote the poem Mother to Son. The poets mother, who speaks in the voice of the African- American teaches him he need not abandon that custom in order to write poetry. All poetry, she says, need not be about crystal stairs. It can have tacks and split up in it, and places with no carpet on the floor.It need not conform to white conventions in either form or subject it can be bareyet it need not ignore those conventions if they can be of use (In fact, the line, And life for me aint been no crystal stair is written in iambic pentameter, the most traditional of English poetic meters). The poet discovers, from listening to his mother-muse, a authority to bring the African-American experience into poetry. He finds a way to movement forward, to keep climbing.We can read in this poem, then, a kind of illustration for the young poets artistic coming of age. From his mother he learns the value and might of his vocation. He hears in her song his own voice which is to serve as the source of inspiration or the starting point of his poetry career. Obviously, through his many literary works, Hughes sought to build up his community (family) of African-Americans by instilling in them a sense of pride and triumph.This theme was oft applied to his works as he wrote to encourage his readers to fight the bout against racism. In this poem as represented by the mother, he had hopes of in some way making a difference, a difference in which the world could change from its biased ways. One may be distracted by tacks and splinters such as r acial discrimination and sometimes circumstances may appear Bare but he must .