294. DSC 251: Mother to Son (3)

Langston Hughes:

Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist and dramatist during the Harlem Renaissance phase. Hughes' first poem was "The Negro speaks of Rivers" which he wrote at the age of 18 and it was dedicated to W. E. B. Dubois, the important Black leader and owner of the crucial political and race magazine "The Crisis". Hughes is considered a city poet or metropolitan poet as his poetry indicates.

The poem:

It was written by him during Harlem Renaissance when the black Americans struggled to be treated equally for social justice.

The poem is unique because it is the desperate cry of a black mother in America to guide her son to success. There was no necessity of such desperatesness of any white mother in America then. It became a representative poem for the Afro-Americans. Hughes was very conscious of being an African-American poet. The poem also utilises the layer of ambition of any person.

Analysis:

The poem uses a mother who addresses her son from the first line onwards. She says that her life has not been crystal clear stairs but tacked and splintered. The stairs may have been in dilapidated state. There are broken boards and no carpets in a wintry country like America. This echoes the discomforts of life that she as a woman, black, mother and human being was going through. "Bare" in one line shows the emptiness in her life. But the lines following shows her perseverance and simultaneously telling her son not to stop climbing or struggling and not turn back. If life was not 'crystal stair' for her then he should also keep going like her. Our parents' struggles motivate us. History is also witness, that people always rise up despite various disasters, wars, or physical illnesses. The darkness used in the poem is the fear and mystery involved in life's everyday challenges. "So, boy don't you turn back" is an extremely motivational line. It is like a protest poem to help her son rise from feeling down.

The poet also wants to say here that life is not an easy sail and amidst the heavy physical or mental agony or struggles, we have to continue.

Selecting a female voice in the poem becomes the personal, racial and universal voice where Hughes is inclusive of all and showing the readers, the power of female voice and gender in playing equivalent role in any struggles of life. His another poem "Song for a Dark Girl" is also one where the race and the woman are imbibed together.

Style:

The poem is a dramatic monologue where the mother is advising the son. The language looks like an African dialect to  the readers. The first line involves a metaphor where life for the mother is not crystal stair. Using stairs we either climb up or go down. The journey on stairs is cultural, social, racial, personal and the political journey of the blacks in America. Although Hughes rarely used, traditionally religious or Christian symbols, or references in his poetry, the stairs may be connected to the biblical reference of Old Testament where Prophet Jacob's (Yakub) mother had tried to hide and save him from the other sons. Actually, God or Bible missing in most of the poems of Hughes. The poem also refers to the fact how the whites, one particular human race was oppressing the black human race just on the basis of colour.  Crystals symbolise beauty, preciousness and elegance. But here in the poem, it has been associated with stair to symbolise stuggles which are gross and not clear as crystals. 'Landin' is another metaphor of struggle. So, these symbols of strairs, crystals, and carpets are all used in relation to human lives. Carpets are used for warmth, protection from cold and beauty. But the speaker's life has been metaphorically missing from any such warmth, protection or beauty. The poem or these symbols may also stand for the racial problem persisting in the world. Here, Hughes makes the personal poem of a mother as the race-based universal poem.

The powerful tone in the poem is music-like poetry, didactic and also is the metaphorical version of jazz, blues and spirituals of the blacks. The poem is a very simple one yet powerful and transcended to readers all over the world.