Entry #8: Response To Mother To Son By Langston Hughes

This poem is basically about how life isn't easy, it's hard for people especially if they don't have much money or are black (in the time period it was written in). It describes life as "not a crystal stair" - hard to walk on, with splinters, no carpet, and so on. The "crystal stair" would be the life easiest to live - probably by wealthy people, of white heritage (time period). I've read this poem many many times over the years for school, and every time I've noticed: a stair made of crystal would probably be hard to walk on, whereas a stair just made of plain wood is also a lot easier. It almost symbolizes that people who seem to have perfect, glamorous, healthy lives, also have a hard life too. That it's impossible to live a perfect life. And nobody owns stairs made of crystal; saying again, no one's life is perfect.

A lot of this poem is based on the time period it was written in too. Like, if it had been written in 2010, the racial inequality part of it that I (and other people in 807 and my other past classes in past years) had thought of probably wouldn't have been thought of if it was recent, or if the writer was white. And I think to wrap up the poem, it's saying that if Langston Hughes and his mother were able to make it up the wooden, tacked, splintered, bared stairs of life, then almost anyone can.