Mother to Son: Motifs

Climbing

The speaker of “Mother to Son” describes her life as a metaphorical ascent up a staircase. As such, a crucial motif in the poem relates to the act of climbing. The speaker references climbing most obviously in the refrain that repeats in lines 2 and 20, where she insists that “life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” In contrast to this ideal crystal stair, the speaker describes her own difficult ascent up a staircase full of hazards (lines 3–7):

It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.

Although the speaker is literally describing a climb in this passage, the element that evokes her climb most clearly is the repetition of the word “And” at the beginning of successive lines. The repetition powerfully evokes the repetition involved in climbing one stair after another. The speaker uses the same technique in the following sentence, where she describes how she’s “been a-climbin’ on, / And reachin’ landin’s, / And turnin’ corners, / And sometimes goin’ in the dark” (lines 9–12). Here again, the repetition of “And” subtly suggests the effort and persistence required to keep climbing one step at a time.

“Don’t”

Throughout the first two-thirds of her address, the speaker describes the endurance she’s cultivated to keep climbing the hazard-ridden “staircase” of her life. She hopes this speech will encourage her son to find the strength to persist in his own “climb” through the obstacles of life. It’s curious, then, that when she addresses her son directly in the poem’s final third, the speaker tells him what he shouldn’t do rather than what he should do (lines 14–17):

So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—

Three times in four lines the speaker cautions her son with the negative imperative: don’t. In each case, she describes a specific action that would represent a failure to persist in the face of challenge. That is, he mustn’t go back down the stairs, he mustn’t rest on the steps, and he mustn’t collapse from exhaustion. It is imperative for him to avoid each of these actions if he wants to endure. Although the speaker’s repeated use of “don’t” could be read as mildly threatening, it is also clear that she speaks with an intention of care. And in any case, sometimes success is better guaranteed by knowing what not to do than by knowing what to do.