Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary device that compares one element to something else. Metaphors
connect things that readers already know to a new element or way of seeing the world. An
extended metaphor takes a comparison and carries it throughout an entire passage, like
Hughes does with the staircase in the poem "Mother to Son." Rather than mentioning the
staircase once, the whole poem is based around the staircase and how it compares to life.
Hughes describes what the staircase, or life, is by first explaining what it isn't.
Motion
Hughes uses strong verbs throughout the poem to simulate the action of climbing the stairs.
This means that he sees life as an uphill climb. "Climbin'," "reachin'," "turnin'" and "goin'"
are all strong action verbs. The mother exhorts her son to keep moving forward and not give
up. She says, "Dont you fall now/ For Ise still goin, honey,/ Ise still climbin." Despite the
difficulties of life, as pictured in the splintered, bare staircase, the mother still wants her son
to keep moving, striving and succeeding.