What do Words Really Mean?

Alyssa Czerwinski

Mrs.Reagles 2nd hour

3/14/12

           Words, what do they really mean? "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair." is a famous quote from the poem Mother to Son by Langston Hughes when he says this he means that life wasn't as easy as people may think, there are challenges. The poem goes on uses the same stair idea to explain his mothers life. Only this time he explains that "It's had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor --Bare." Langston is trying to say it there is many difficulties in life a lot like the first. When Langston wrote this he tried to see himself in his mothers shoes and figured being a divorced mother wasn't anything like a walk in the Park.