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 imagery, allows for universal recognition; the speaker’s child (and the reader) can take her advice and apply it to their own life without losing the message in the specific details of the speaker’s personal struggle. The reader can imagine these struggles in an abstract yet painfully physical way. Each hardship the speaker faces on the stair is a palpable image: “It’s had tacks in it, / And splinters” (Lines 3-4). These specific, powerful images of sharpness convey the depth of the speaker’s struggle. As tacks and splinters pierce the skin, so these life challenges have penetrated to some depth, whether emotionally or physically. The poem’s initial tone is a kind of disconsolate pragmatism.

The speaker moves on from describing the overtly injurious aspects of her staircase to the more hidden pain of privation: “And places with no carpet on the floor” (Line 6). The line is dense with implication. The missing carpet predisposes a person to splinters, but it also represents a lack of comfort; a carpet is soft, warm, and aesthetically pleasing. Moreover, instead of the stairs being uniformly bare, there are only “places” (Line 6) with no carpet, suggesting a state of disrepair and being worn down. The speaker’s life is without the outside attention and support bestowed on a more privileged existence, and even carpet is a rare luxury in her grueling ascent. There is also emphasis on the word “Bare” (Line 7), as it stands alone in its own line. The word calls attention to sheer lack—in the meaning of the word itself as well as the paucity conveyed through its solitary presence in the line. This bareness is the emptiness the speaker felt, even her poverty. The missing carpet represents all the things the speaker never had—the opportunities, the material goods, and even the basic human comforts.

After these first seven lines firmly establish a reality of suffering, the next section marks the poem’s central shift in tone toward hopefulness. While Lines 4 through 6 begin with the conjunction “And”—as though the speaker is cataloging types of pain, creating a sense of relentlessness and exhaustion—the seventh line’s beginning “But” moves to qualify the previous lines’ hardship. The speaker asserts that she still climbs the dangerous staircase despite these precarious obstacles and discouragement. She has always been “[…] a climbin’ on, / And reachin’ landin’s, / And turnin’ corners” (Lines 10-11). This emphatic repetition of the conjunction “and,” in contrast to previous lines, insists on hope. These landings and corners are places of respite and relief or moments of triumph or change. Even though the climb is treacherous and the speaker finds little immediate reward for her efforts, there are moments of small victory, times where she realizes that she’s making progress and working towards something better. Still, other times, she turns a corner into darkness, places “Where there ain’t been no light” (Line 13), symbolizing the unknown, or the frightening, or the utter lack of outside help in finding direction in life.

Ultimately for the speaker, however, survival requires determination and forward movement. She tells her son—prefaced by yet another conjunction, this time signifying conclusion—“So boy, don’t you turn back” (Line 14). Even though the staircase is often agonizing and seemingly endless, the speaker insists that her son keep moving and ascending, “Don’t you set down on the steps” (Line 15). The speaker is fixated on movement; it is the momentum forward and upward that allows her to keep her strength and perseverance. She does not go into detail about what will happen if she stops moving, but it is clear why the overwhelming temptation might exist. As forward movement symbolizes hope, to stop or turn back would be to resign or despair. The speaker then cautions her son not to fall. She uses herself to demonstrate that it can be done: If she can keep climbing after all she has been through, so can he. She reaffirms, “I’se still climbin’ (Line 19), calling attention back to this forward movement, this perpetual upward motion. The last line recalls the opening in Line 2, creating a refrain: “And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Line 20). Just as she has had to climb the rickety staircase, so will her son—and possibly many generations after him.

The precondition for the speaker’s persistence is her belief that there is something worth climbing for. She never states what she believes awaits her and her son, only that it is important to keep climbing. In the early 1920s, Black Americans, especially the women, faced categorical and blatant oppression that was enforced, codified, and celebrated by the dominant social group of white Americans, who profited from the power disparity. The American Civil Rights Movement was still more than 40 years away, and the women’s suffrage movement typically only benefitted (or even acknowledged) white women. For the speaker of this poem, it would have been incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to picture a better world or a better life for herself. This unimaginable future is the mystery that remains at the end of the staircase, or why she or her child should keep climbing. The speaker does not know, but she knows that they cannot stop, and that it would be infinitely worse if they do not try. The deceptively simple poem presents a complex, dynamic voice whose ultimate tone is sober, urgent, hopeful.