Mother to Son

“Mother to Son” utilizes a staircase as an extended metaphor for the progression of life. For the speaker, a mother lecturing her son, she makes it very clear that her life has not been easy, elegant, or traditionally beautiful by asserting “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Line 2). The crystal staircase represents not only an ideal life but a privileged one. A crystal staircase is glamorous and a status symbol of wealth, but it is also stable and supremely smooth. In contrast, the speaker’s life—like the lives of most of the poem’s contemporary Black Americans—has been neither prosperous nor easy. In addition to representing a basic absence of wealth and ease, however, the extended metaphor of “ain’t been no crystal stair” (Line 2) supplies numerous examples of the presence of troubles the speaker has faced; as such, the metaphor is a vehicle for the speaker’s philosophy for persevering. Ultimately, she has a deep faith in perpetual motion; she believes that as long as a person keeps moving through all the obstacles and hardships they come up against, their momentum will propel them onwards and upwards.

The metaphor, while increasingly particular in its

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