Mother to Son

While the poem “Mother to Son” is a speech of encouragement for the speaker’s son, she spends most of the poem describing hardship. The speaker does not expound on the bountiful future that awaits her son if he continues his ascent, nor does she describe any kind of reward as the ultimate goal. In fact, she discusses no goal whatsoever; the poem is not concerned with rewards or ultimate goals. It is concerned with maintaining strength to endure the hard times. The speaker does not minimize the difficulty of this climb; suffering features more vividly than hope or perseverance. The speaker wants not only to inspire her son, but to describe her difficult life: “It’s had tacks in it, / And splinters” (Lines 4-5). She uses tacks and splinters as a metaphor for the obstacles she’s overcome and the pain these difficulties have caused her, like a needle or a splinter through the foot. However, rather than focusing only on active injury or affliction, the poem presents a vision of hardship that encompasses a totality of suffering, and the extended metaphor speaks also to the pain of deficit and privation. She describes places on the stairs with no carpet, nothing to cushion her steps on this rickety staircase: “And places with no carpet on the floor— / Bare” (Lines 5-6).