Compare and contrast:

Mother to Son & The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Imagine that your life starts getting harder and harder. And you keep conquering the problems one by one. Poems Mother to Son and The Rose That Grew from Concrete will show you how to rise above the oppression and challenges in similar ways. They both use metaphors to emphasize the challenges and hope their effort would overcome the difficulties.

In the poem Mother to Son, Hughes uses metaphors to show the difficulties facing a mother and the persistence she upholds to fight against the unfair life. The author uses “splinters and boards torn up and places with no carpet on the floor” to depict the racism towards black people in the last century. Words “no light” and “dark” represent no hope. The black woman reaches her destination directly because there are “turning corners”, which symbolizes the opportunities and challenges on her way. The “crystal stairs” represents that the powerful white people have the privilege to live a shining and smooth life, which makes a sharp contrast with the mother’s dark and hard life. However, Hughes conveys the hope and resistance from the mother’s words, indicating that the mother is “still climbing”. The author compares the lives of people to stairs. The mother’s climbing process means that she insists upon living and fighting against the unfair society on her rough road. Despite the varieties of writing techniques employed, the author approves the spirit of the mother and conveys the belief of keep fighting.

Like Mother to Son, the poem "The Rose That Grew from Concrete" written by Shakur also uses metaphors to depict the process of overcoming obstacles and growing. He compares himself and others like him to the “rose”. The growing environment of the rose, “the concrete” is correspondingly the symbol of dark society or the slum that the author grew from and brings him resistance for growing. The “crack” is a glean hope of survival for the “rose”. As a result, we can say that the “crack” is the metaphor of hope for the people who live in dark “concrete”, the dark corner in the society. The development of a rose is the growth of a man. Next, the author states that the growth of the “rose that grew from concrete” is a miracle which “breaks the nature’s laws”. In reality, the success of the author is a kind of miracle because of his humble growing background. The author does not only affirm himself, but more importantly, he praises the spirit and the hard work that people like him demonstrate.

In conclusion, the two poems both allude to the topic that black people struggle and fight in society in the last century. They both praise the black men and women for their fighting and hard work during oppression. The writing techniques that the two authors use in the two poems both contribute to the respective topic and finally show us the fight and rise of black people.