As indicated in the poem’s title, the speaker is a mother who addresses her son. The theme of her speech revolves around the endurance she’s had to maintain in the face of the many hazards that have obstructed her path through life. She speaks about her own experience in order to inspire her son to persist through the difficulties that he will inevitably face. The seriousness of her address demonstrates that she loves her son deeply, and that she’s worried about him. It’s possible that he’s recently been acting out, or that he’s seemed downtrodden or depressed. We can’t know for sure. But whatever’s going on with him has worried his mother enough to deliver this speech about the value of persisting even when times get rough. But aside from the evident love she has for her son, it’s also clear that the speaker herself possesses a great deal of inner strength. Not only has she demonstrated her own capacity to endure, but she also ends the poem with a powerful statement of her continued determination: “I’se still climbin’” (line 19).

In addition to the speaker’s endurance and care for her son, it’s important to note that she speaks from her particular position as a Black woman. That the speaker is Black would be immediately obvious to anyone reading the poem in its original context, at the end of Hughes’s collection, The Weary Blues. Most of the poems in that collection feature Black speakers centering Black life and experience. However, the speaker’s racial identity is also indicated by the idiom of her speech, which reflects grammatical features common in African American Vernacular English. For an example, consider lines 15–19:

     Don’t you set down on the steps
     ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
     Don’t you fall now—
     For I’se still goin’, honey,
     I’se still climbin’

Pay particular attention to the verbs, which are used in ways distinct from other forms of American English. For instance, “Don’t you set down” could also be rendered “Don’t you sit down.” Likewise, the contraction “I’se” is another way of saying “I’m.” In addition to her racial identity, it’s also important to note that the speaker likely belongs to the working class. She indicates as much when she insists that her life “ain’t been no crystal stair” (lines 2 and 20). The image of a crystal stair clearly references wealth and class privilege, to which she’s never had access.

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