Mother to Son
“Mother to Son” Langston Hughes – Poetry Response
Use close reading strategies and Orr’s Four Temperaments to write your response.
Below are questions to guide you in your response, you don’t have to answer them all.
Write in complete sentences with an introduction, body, and conclusion.
Your response should be a minimum of 250 words.
What did you notice on the first reading of the poem? What about the second reading?
(metaphor, symbolism, irony, paradox, other literary devices)
What patterns do you see in the poem?
What is significant about these patterns?
What argument or thesis can you make regarding this poem?
How could you “prove” that thesis? What evidence do you see in the text?
What is the strongest temperament in this poem? Give examples of how the poet uses the temperament.
What underlying ideologies are in this text? Give examples on why you think this.
What literary theory could most easily be used to analyze this text? Give examples from the text.
So what? Why do these things you noticed matter to you, us, or the larger world?
Sample Solution
“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes uses the metaphor of a staircase to depict the difficulties and dangers one will face in life. the poem contains a mother`s warning to her son about the stairs one is forced to climb throughout life. He must watch out for broken boards, splinters, and tacks. These things are there in order to throw him off. The poem is a free verse poem which does not follow rhyme scheme and stanza pattern. There is a repetition of the line “life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” which has created a musical quality in the poem.
