Mother To Son By Langston Hughes

The poem “Mother to Son,” by Langston Hughes, is about a mother advising her son about life. She tells him that life is not easy and that he should not give up even when life is hard. Throughout the poem she uses an extended metaphor to compare life as a decayed stair. The mother expressed the hardship of life by saying, “And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor” (4-6). She describes the stair as an old and decayed stair that seems impossible to climb. Life is hard to live through and to point that out the mother compares it to climbing the stair as very painful task. Further throughout the poem the mother goes more in depth and reveals more difficulties of living by expressing, “I’se been a-climbin’ on, And