About the Author…
Fascinated with jazz rhythms and the lyrics of blues music, Langston Hughes published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, in 1926. A major figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, plays, and nonfiction. His works captured and celebrated the colorful culture of black America.
“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards all torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now —
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
1. Identify the key metaphor in the poem “Mother to Son,” and comment on its effectiveness.
2. How might the poem change if it were written from the son’s point of view?
3. Hurston organized Their Eyes Were Watching God as a frame novel, in which the first and last chapters form a frame for the story that Janie tells her friend Pheoby. Can you think of other stories, books, or films that use a frame structure?
4. Consider the following sentences from Chapter 2: “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.” Why do you think Hurston chose to juxtapose opposing images as she presents the central simile?
Chapter 2: Exploring Figurative language
Figurative language from Chapter 2 / Analysis, Commentary, Reflection…Within the first two chapters of Hurston’s novel, what images do you see repeated? What might these motifs represent?
5. Sketch Janie’s family tree.
6. Once you have finished reading Chapter 2, compare and contrast the voice of Nanny to the voice of Hughes’s narrator in “Mother to Son.”
7. You have seen how Hurston compares Janie’s life to a tree and Nanny’s life to a very different tree. On a separate sheet of paper, create a visual representation of your own life, using a tree as a metaphor. Under your visual representation, write an explanation of the tree metaphor you have created.