Entry # 9: Mother to Son Langston Hughes

The poem Mother to Son is beautiful in a simplistic kind of way.  When I first read it, I thought I already knew all of what it was about.  I was sure I had grasped every single bit of symbolism.  However, as the class discussed their opinions on what the poem meant, I realized that I did not know all of the poem at all. The beauty of this poem is that parts of it had a different meaning for everyone, and everybody can connect to it in different ways. In the poem, what everyone agrees on is that the stairway symbolizes life.  I'm sure it's not just life, but the journey of life.

In brief, The mother figure in the poem is recounting to her son about the hardships of her life, "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair, it's had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up."  But, she says, I've kept on going.  She tells her son about how even though her life had been hard, she's kept on living it and persevered through it.  "I'se been a-climbin' on."  She says that she has kept on climbing, " and reachin' landin's, and turnin' corners." Basically, she is saying that her life has been tough, but she's struggled through, found the strength to live to live on, and has been rewarded with good times too.

When I read this poem, I envision an old, dark woman sitting in a rocking chair.  She's one of those southern women that you can tell is frail in body but strong in heart. And she's Langston Hughes' mother.  I imagine Hughes sitting by her, you can tell he feels weak and sad.  --This is how I think the poem was born.  Hughes was going through a rough time, so his mother gave him a pep talk.

But oh what a beautiful pep talk it was.  And, oh, how I wish my mother would talk to me like that.  Whenever she tries to talk to me, it just ends up sounding cheesy and insincere.  This poem could sound Cliche, cheesy and insincere-But it is pulled off really well, and it doesn't.  It just sounds beautiful, and maybe because it's so real.  While we can all say that our lives are imperfect, and "haven't been no crystal stair", I can almost assure you that the Mother has actually had a life with tacks and splinters.  Well, we all have-But you can tell her problems were big.  It may be from the limited knowledge I have of Langston Hughes, and I know that his mother was a black woman in the times where women and people of color had no rights.  So we can all complain about our lives sucking, but there are bigger things than just our petty problems.

There are so many ways you can reach deeper into this poem. I believe it was Fiona Socolow who called the  crystal staircase "Cold perfection," and someone else pointed out that crystal is sharp. Which led me to thinking deeply about the crystal staircase.  Because I feel that there is nothing worse than being cold, frigid.  Like the Ice Queen in Narnia.   If there is a Hell, I doubt it's burning.  More likely it is ice cold, and you're alone.   So I went into questioning whether the Crystal Stair is really good.  Because if there is one thing that I've learned from my life- Your problems build your character.  I know if I had gone through life without the problems I've faced, I'd be be a completely different person.  Living your life in complete perfection gets you nowhere as an actual human being.

This poem is great because you can dig so deeply into it- And everybody can have a different idea about it.  For instance, you don't even have to consider this poem as actually from a mother to a son, but more of a lesson to society.  There are so many ways you can think about this poem, and that's what makes it beautiful.