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Langston HughesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
“Mother to Son” is a single stanza, free verse poem with no set meter, which creates a loose and conversational rhythm to the poem reflecting the conversation the speaker is having with her son. The varying line lengths, with a few particularly long lines and a few exceedingly short ones, emphasize the conversational tone. While there is no apparent rhyme scheme, a few subtle and slant rhymes like “stair” (Line 2) and “Bare” (Line 7), or “dark” (Line 12) and “hard” (Line 16) also reinforce the rhythm of the poem, giving it a lyrical quality. The distinctive rhythm, aided by a subtle rhyme scheme and varying line lengths, gives the poem a musical beat, reminiscent of Hughes’s development of jazz poetry a few years later. Even this early work hints at the influence of jazz and the artistic movements that were emerging from the Harlem Renaissance. The poem opens and closes with the same sentiment, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” on Lines 2 and 20. The single stanza embodies the single-mindedness of the speaker and her philosophy: There are no breaks on the stairs.
By Langston Hughes
Children’s Rhymes
Langston Hughes
Cora Unashamed
Langston Hughes
Dreams
Langston Hughes
Harlem
Langston Hughes
I look at the world
Langston Hughes
I, Too
Langston Hughes
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
Me and the Mule
Langston Hughes
Mulatto
Langston Hughes
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
Not Without Laughter
Langston Hughes
Slave on the Block
Langston Hughes, Timothy Zahn
Thank You, M'am
Langston Hughes
The Big Sea
Langston Hughes
Theme for English B
Langston Hughes
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes, Aleron Kong
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
The Ways of White Folks
Langston Hughes, Meghan Quinn
The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes
Tired
Langston Hughes