Mother to Son

Summary

Mother to Son is a twenty-line poem by Langston Hughes, first printed in The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, in December 1922, and collected four years later in Hughes's first book, The Weary Blues (1926). It is a dramatic monologue: the whole poem is spoken by a mother to her son, in her own voice and in the speech of a working Black woman of the time. She begins with a plain announcement. Well, son, she will tell him: life for her ain't been no crystal stair. Instead of a gleaming, easy staircase, hers has had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor, bare. But all the time she has been climbing on, reaching landings, turning corners, and sometimes going in the dark where there has been no light. Then she turns her experience into a charge. So, boy, don't you turn back. Don't you sit down on the steps because you find it's kind of hard. Don't you fall now, for she is still going, still climbing, and life for her ain't been no crystal stair. The poem ends where it began, but the repetition now sounds like a badge of honor rather than a complaint. The whole poem rests on one extended metaphor. A crystal stair suggests ease, wealth and beauty; the mother's stair is worn, rough and sometimes unlit. Each hazard stands for a hardship she does not need to name, and her climb stands for a life of steady effort. Hughes's short lines and the rhythm of her speech make the poem sound spoken rather than written. The poem should be taught as what it is, a mother's lesson in perseverance. She does not pretend life is easy, and she does not let her son quit. Her example comes first, then her words. In a classical Christian classroom the poem sits naturally beside the biblical call not to grow weary in well doing and beside the honor Scripture gives to the counsel of a mother.

Top Lessons

• Example before advice

  The mother first tells what she has done, climbing through every hardship, and only then tells her son what to do. Her words carry weight because her life backs them up. Students can learn that the most persuasive teachers practice what they preach.

• The extended metaphor of the stair

  Hughes builds the whole poem on one image. Tacks, splinters, torn boards and dark stretches each stand for a hardship. Students can practice reading a metaphor all the way through and saying what each part might mean.

• Do not grow weary

  The mother's commands, don't you turn back, don't you sit down, don't you fall, teach perseverance plainly. Hughes wrote in a time of segregation and poverty for many Black families, which makes her steadiness heroic. Scripture also calls believers not to be weary in well doing.

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