This poem is a dramatic monologue spoken by a mother to her son, using the metaphor of climbing a stairway to represent life's journey. The mother warns her son that unlike the smooth path implied by a "crystal stair," life will present many obstacles in the form of "tacks" and "splinters." However, she advises perseverance, as her own struggles show that steady progress is possible through endurance and faith. The mother aims to prepare her son for the challenges of being black in America by sharing her hard-won wisdom about maintaining hope in the face of discrimination and poverty.

1. Mother to Son
Langston Hughes 1922
Author Biography
Poem Summary
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
For Further Study
“Mother to Son” was first published in the magazine Crisis in December of 1922 and
reappeared in Langston Hughes’s first collection of poetry, The Weary Blues in 1926. In that
volume and later works, Hughes explores the lives of African-Americans who struggle
against poverty and discrimination. Hughes was dubbed “the poet laureate of Harlem” for his
many portraits of Harlem as a crossroads of African-American experience. “Mother to Son”
is a dramatic monologue, spoken by the persona of a black mother to her son. Using the
metaphor of a stairway, the mother tells her son that the journey of life more closely
resembles a long, trying walk up the dark, decrepit stairways of a tenement than a glide down
a “crystal stair.” The “crystal stair” is a metaphor for the American dream and its promise
that all Americans shall have equal opportunities. The mother warns her son not to expect an
easy climb or a tangible reward. Through the metaphor of ascent, however, the speaker
suggests that her endurance and struggle are necessary to progress toward racial justice and to
maintain spiritual hope and faith. In this poem, Hughes represents the personal, collective,
and spiritual importance of struggle, endurance, and faith.
Author Biography
Hughes was born in in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, to James Nathaniel and Carrie Mercer
Langston Hughes, who separated shortly after their son’s
birth. Hughes’s mother had attended college, while his father, who wanted to become a
lawyer, took correspondence courses in law. Denied a chance to take the Oklahoma bar
exam, Hughes’s father went first to Missouri and then, still unable to become a lawyer, left
his wife and son to move first to Cuba and then to Mexico. In Mexico, he became a wealthy
landowner and lawyer. Because of financial difficulties, Hughes’s mother moved frequently
in search of steady work, often leaving him with her parents. His grandmother Mary Leary

2. Langston was the first black woman to attend Oberlin College. She inspired the boy to read
books and value an education. When his grandmother died in 1910, Hughes lived with family
friends and various relatives in Kansas. In 1915 he joined his mother and new stepfather in
Lincoln, Illinois, where he attended grammar school. The following year, the family moved
to Cleveland, Ohio. There he attended Central High School, excelling in both academics and
sports. Hughes also wrote poetry and short fiction for the Belfry Owl, the high school literary
magazine, and edited the school yearbook. In 1920 Hughes left to visit his father in Mexico,
staying in that country for a year. Returning home in 1921, he attended Columbia University
for a year before dropping out. For a time he worked as a cabin boy on a merchant ship,
visited Africa, and wrote poems for a number of American magazines. In 1923 and 1924
Hughes lived in Paris. He returned to the United States in 1925 and resettled with his mother
and half-brother in Washington, D.C. He continued writing poetry while working menial
jobs. In May and August of 1925 Hughes’s verse earned him literary prizes from both
Opportunity and Crisis magazines. In December Hughes, then a busboy at a Washington,
D.C, hotel, attracted the attention of poet Vachel Lindsay by placing three of his poems on
Lindsay’s dinner table. Later that evening Lindsay read Hughes’s poems to an audience and
announced his discovery of a “Negro busboy poet.” The next day reporters and photographers
eagerly greeted Hughes at work to hear more of his compositions. He published his first
collection of poetry, The Weary Blues, in 1926. Around this time Hughes became active in
the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of creativity among a group of African-American artists
and writers. Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and other writers founded Fire!, a literary journal
devoted to African-American culture. The venture was unsuccessful, however, and ironically
a fire eventually destroyed the editorial offices. In 1932 Hughes traveled with other black
writers to the Soviet Union on an ill-fated film project. His infatuation with Soviet
Communism and Joseph Stalin led Hughes to write on politics throughout the 1930s. He also
became involved in drama, founding several theaters. In 1938 he founded the Suitcase
Theater in Harlem, in 1939 the Negro Art Theater in Los Angeles, and in 1941 the Skyloft
Players in Chicago. In 1943 Hughes received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Lincoln
University, and in 1946 he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He
continued to write poetry throughout the rest of his life, and by the 1960s he was known as
the “Dean of Negro Writers.” Hughes died in New York on May 22, 1967.
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[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]
Poem Summary
Lines 1-2
The first two lines establish what the title implies: this poem is a dramatic monologue spoken
by the persona of a mother to her son. The son never speaks; the mother’s life experience and
advice may therefore apply to all readers, but particularly to young African-American
readers. The metaphor of the crystal stair may represent several things. It may symbolize
dreams that the mother once held but which she has learned no longer to expect. The crystal
stair may also represent the mother’s spiritual quest toward heaven, Christian grace, and
redemption. Or, in material terms, it may invoke the large, gleaming staircases that starlets
glide down in movies. In each possible interpretation, the crystal stair connotes smoothness
and ease, delicacy, wealth, and a clear, well-lit path toward a rich (material or spiritual)

3. destination. These connotations contrast with images in the poem that show how rough and
discouraging the mother’s actual life has been.
Lines 3-7
In these lines, the mother describes the specific ways that her life’s journey has diverged from
the ideal of the crystal stair. Grammatically, the “it” in line 3 refers to the subject of the
previous sentence: “Life.” Thus one might interpret the line to read, “my life’s had tacks in
it.” Or, extending the metaphor of the stairway (of life), the “it” may refer to stairs. Tacks and
splinters may be read as figurative hazards one might find on an actual stairway in a rundown
building. The tacks, splinters, worn-out carpet, and torn-up boards represent overuse and
neglect. Many travellers before the mother have hauled themselves on this journey, and many
will do so after her. The damaged parts of the stairway may represent the inability of
individual sojourners to repair the structures under-girding their lives (such as poverty and
reduced opportunity) or it may represent the disadvantaged state of black life in America
itself. The “torn up” boards may represent someone’s attempt to dismantle this stairway
altogether. R. Baxter Miller interprets the “tacks” and “splinters” in this poem as threats to
the mother’s body and soul. Physically, the tacks and splinters represent small, nagging pains
that might puncture and infect the mother as she struggles upward. Symbolically, however,
these small threats represent potential injuries to “the black American soul.” The mother’s
recognition of these obstacles and her apparent avoidance of them signal her wise negotiation
of life’s setbacks.
Lines 8-11
Having listed some of the literal and figurative hazards the son might encounter on his
journey, the mother affirms the value of persistence and faith in one’s goal. From lines 8 to
13, she makes it clear that, despite obstacles, she has continued to make gains. The mother’s
personal advancement represents progress for the black race as well. …