Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Mother to Son
Please rethink your response to Langston Hughe's poem "Mother to Son." I could not find a single response which recognizes the historical context. This is not just any mother. Oh, no. This mother symbolizes other mothers, mothers who lived the hell of slavery, of post Civil War reconstruction (irony there). Mothers from the Deep South who witnessed laws which encouraged violence and racism against all African American people. Mothers who lived in fear for their families because of the hate crimes that were tolerated in states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. School buses carried white children to schools but "blew by" African American children walking miles and miles to attend schools which began much later because they had to pick cotton first. Lynchings, burnings, tar and feathering, beatings were realities. Please rethink your response. Hughes narrator is not just any Mother. Go beyond the text of the poem to make connections to history and the United States.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Dear Classmates and Mrs.Leighton,
ReplyDeleteI read “Mother to Son” and I see it as meaning life is hard, it’s not going to be easy, or as he says it “ain’t been no crystal staircase”. And the mother is telling her son that no matter how many bumps or splinters there may be in life, he has to continue to climb up, and he can’t just stop because the road gets bumpy. She hasn’t. She’s still climbing. Throughout her life, haters have tried to knock her down, have treated her bad, and she had to fight for her rights and for her freedoms. Stereotypes have knocked her and her brothers and sisters before her down. Weather they have to fight to sit where they wanted to sit on a bus, weather they had to push for the right to be served at a restaurant, or go to school to get an equal education as any other race, religion, or even gender. Mothers throughout history have been tested and tried time and time again, but no matter what, they fought, they stood up, and they used their voice. Places without, as she says, carpets, and places with tacs and splinters symbolize all the unpleasantness she has went through in life. And she is pushing for her son to do the same, because that’s what life has. It has unfair treatment, war, and tragedy, but no matter what, he has to continue. He has to keep climbing those stairs.
I read the poem "Mother to Son", The speaker of the poem is the mother. I think the message of the poem was that no matter hard life gets, he shouldn't give up. He should keep on going and make the best of things.
ReplyDelete~Ceara:)
Hey Bloggers,
ReplyDeleteI think that the poem Mother to Son by Langston Hughes is about a mother explaining to her son that hardships that she has been through in her life. Knowing that Langston Hughes writes about what the African-American race, and what they have been through, I can infer the mother what talking about slavery or civil rights. When the mother says "Life for ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, splinters and boards torn up!" I think that she is talking about what she went through when she was a child. Maybe she could have been a slave or had been treated so unfairly. But she is telling her son that he shouldn't give up just because life gets difficult, because she is still pushing through life and if she can do it he can do it.
Julia 8H