Langston Hughes Critique

In Aiden Wasley’s critique of “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, Wasley summarizes and analyzes the poem and gives a unique perspective on the poem and the poet. Wasley’s critique provides detailed insight of the character’s roles, biblical references, and overall theme of “Mother to Son”. His ideas seem logical and tastefully distributed. Wasley could have mentioned more about why “Mother to Son” is still a popular poem in modern times.
Wasley describes his opinions about how he believes that the Mother figure in the poem is symbolic for the troublesome history of African-Americans. According to Wasley, Langston Hughes has used the “mother talking to son” setting in a few of his other poems as well. Wasley also did a fantastic job at explaining how Hughes references “Life ain’t a crystal stair” to the biblical story of “Jacob’s Ladder”. These details give the readers of the poem more background information and bring new depth to the poem. In his critique, Wasley also evaluates the form of “Mother to Son” and states that this poem has a prominently defined Blues theme. One reason, which Wasley did not mention, that “Mother to Son” is still a popular poem is that the themes of struggle and hardships are universal subjects that almost every human has to go through in some point of their lives. “Mother to Son” can also be seen as an encouraging and inspiring story for people who are going through such hardships.
Overall, Aiden Wasley’s critique was thorough and he explained many different elements of “Mother to Son”. Some of these elements include the role’s of the characters, bliblical references, and the Blues theme of the poem. It felt as though Wasley analyzed this poem from every angle except the universal themes of struggle and hardship and the inspiration quality that “Mother to Son”