The use of language and free verse in this poem lets the mother's dialect and voice come through vividly. Her voice reaches us in an unmediated way. The poem therefore has the immediacy of direct address from the opening line on: "Well, son, I’ll tell you."
Free verse does not have a regular meter, and this allows Hughes to vary his line length to put the emphasis on certain words, such as "splinters" and "bare." The jagged rhythms mimic as well the mother's jagged climb up steps where she has to avoid missing boards, splinters, dark spots, and sharp corners.
Beyond dialect, the mother's central contrast is between her life climbing a tough set of stairs and the crystal stairway to heaven that Jacob dreamed he saw going up to heaven in the biblical book of Genesis. On this stairway, Jacob watched angels ascending and descending. The mother's life, she is saying, has not been that smooth, and her son's won't be either, because they are black people in America. Nevertheless, she advises her son never to give up.
Although the mother sees her life as rough, she functions as an angel to her son in her inspiration to him to keep climbing:
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’
In this poem, a mother seeks to encourage her son to persevere through life's difficulties. The purpose is to convey a simple truth: life is hard and you have to keep going. To this end, the speaker keeps her diction easy for her son to understand.
Mixed in with casual dialect are metaphors which aren't overly complex but do add depth to this mother's meaning:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
This almost seems an allusion to the classic Cinderella story where she loses her glass slipper on stairs just after midnight. For the mother, there has never been a fairy tale ending or a Prince Charming to rescue her. Instead, she has faced life's "tacks" and "splinters." These metaphors convey difficulty, and even young children could appreciate these examples of figurative language.
In addition to keeping casual language, the speaker also uses free verse. Life, with all of its troubles and hardships, is unpredictable. The form of the poem reinforces this idea. The reader never knows what can be found in the next line and finds no easy cadence in the meter. In fact, the shortest line in the poem is simply the word "bare," the powerful isolation of a single word conveying the complete emptiness felt in life from time to time.
The speaker's focus on her primary audience (her son) guides her use of language and form.
The poem's language is simple and conversational, and the speaker's diction and word choices reinforce the message about how difficult life can be, especially for people who may not have much education or who haven't had certain advantages or certain kinds of privilege. The speaker uses words like "ain't" and truncates words (e.g., "reachin'" and "turnin'"). Instead of saying I am still going, she says, "I'se still goin', honey." This kind of language may tell us about her education level and help us to understand why her life may have been especially arduous and difficult; she's probably had to work even harder because of her lack of education and any judgement she might have endured from others as a result.
The free verse has much the same effect as the speaker's language. It feels informal and intimate, as opposed to the more rigid and patterned sound associated with regular meter. I also think it makes us pay even greater attention to the words used, because there is no regular meter to distract us.
"Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes is narrated by a mother who is advising her son about life's challenges. She shares her hard times and setbacks and encourages her son to continue climbing and moving forward. The use of language and dialect is intended to represent the mother's true voice as she encourages her son to persevere. Hughes uses a metaphor in comparing the staircase mentioned by the mother to the struggles the mother endures. The imagery of "tacks" and "splinters" in the poem create a picture in the reader's mind of the obstacles faced by the mother. Although life has not been easy, she perseveres in her journey and hopes her son will do the same. By using free verse, Hughes allows the mother's voice to be heard as natural, conversational speech.
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