Mother To Son Literary Devices

“Mother to Son” is a poem written by one of the most admired and popular writers during the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes. The time period the poem was first published was in 1922. The poem is twenty lines long with no apparent rhyme schemes or rhythm. There are two characters in this poem, a mother and her son. The vernacular makes it seem like the mother is uneducated and is/was apart of the lower class based upon the information given. The depiction of the rhetoric device, anaphora, is shown with the word “And” at the beginning of several of the lines. The tone of the poem is very heartening, encouraging, and positive. The poem is about a mother giving advice to her son about not giving up and to keep moving forward in life despite hard times.
I thought this was a wonderful piece of work because it is so inspirational and uplifting.
At the beginning of the poem, a mother compares her life to a staircase and tells her son that her life has been no crystal stair. This to me meant that her life hadn’t been easy and she didn’t have a life of glamour, money, or status. She goes on to say that her “staircase” had tacks, splinters, boards torn up, and places with no carpet symbolizing she had a really rough and hard life. She told her son that even though she had all these problems, she kept climbing her staircase, reaching landings, turning …show more content…
It is very well written and the reader can imagine this conversation going on between the mother and her son in their head. I feel like this selection not only represents America, but humanity as a whole and it shows humanity that they shouldn’t give up even when they are going through hard times. The mother was trying to encourage her son to keep going and have hope, furthermore the author is encouraging the reader and humanity to keep going and have