Next

At no point in the poem does the speaker reference a concrete setting. That said, it’s possible to infer a context based on the intimacy of the mother’s address to her son. It’s most likely that she’s speaking in a domestic context. She could, for instance, be speaking to him in a kitchen or family room, or perhaps in the more private space of a bedroom. But despite these possibilities, the speaker doesn’t reference the concrete, physical setting. Instead, she speaks more abstractly about a staircase that stands as a metaphor for life experience. She describes how she’s found this staircase to be full of “tacks,” “splinters,” and “boards torn up” (lines 3, 4, and 5). She’s had to maneuver around each of these hazards in order to keep climbing the staircase. Just as the staircase is metaphorical, so are the hazards. Here, the tacks, splinters, and broken boards represent the particular challenges faced by Black people in a racist society. In this way, the poem’s setting might best be understood as American society at large.

Next section Themes

Take a Study Break