"Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes & "to James" by Frank Horne
Summary:
The poems "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes and "To James" by Frank Horne have specific literary elements that can tell a person how to achieve happiness and fullfillment in life.
Sometimes life is not always happy. Sometimes there are many obstacles in your way that will bring you down when you are trying to achieve fulfillment. Even though these obstacles can bring you down people find ways that they can get over them. The poems "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes and "To James" by Frank Home have specific literary elements that can tell a person how to achieve happiness and fulfillment in life.
The poem "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes uses literary elements and techniques for ways to achieve happiness and fulfillment in life. One literary element that Hughes uses to tell people how to achieve happiness is theme. When she says "so boy, don't you set down on the steps 'cause you finds it kinder hard" it shows that she doesn't want people to give up when they are trying to reach their dreams. Sometimes many people think that their goal is too difficult to achieve and give up because they don't believe in themselves. If you just believe in yourself and keep on moving you're most likely to achieve what you want to achieve. She's trying to tell people that no matter what kind of obstacle are in your way, simple or difficult, that you must keep on moving towards your goal because in the end it will all be worth while. Langston Hughes also used an extended metaphor and repetition to tell a person how to achieve happiness and fulfillment in life. When she says "I'se still climbin' and life for me ain't been no crystal stair. People think that in order to be happy you need to have a crystal stair or a "perfect life." In this poem the mother is trying to tell the people that you should still go for your dreams even though your life is not going so smoothly. It's also saying that you can achieve your goal no matter what kind of life you have as long as you have perseverance and never give up through the process.
These are some of the ways that the poem "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes can portray ways to have happiness and fulfillment in life. There are many poems that try to tell people how to achieve happiness and fulfillment in your life, including, "To James" by Frank Home.
The poem "To James" also has literary elements and techniques that can tell a person how to obtain happiness. A technique that shows how to achieve happiness and fulfillment is figurative language when it says "run high, run hard save nothing and finish." This means to never hold back and fight to finish. Home uses this figurative language to clarify how important it is to care about nothing until you finish what you want to achieve. This quote of figurative language is also saying to live your life to the fullest because life s short. In the same section of the poem it uses repetition when its says "run high, run hard." The repetition makes us stress the word run and keep moving at your own pace so that you can finish and become victorious. Another element he uses is imagery. Imagery is seen when the coach says "how you flung your body at the start.. .how your spikes ripped the cinders." Frank Home uses a lot of imagery in this poem which can be viewed as determination and living life to the fullest. "How you flung your body at the start" can show how a person is very determined to win a race and trying to live his life to the fullest and become happy when he wins the race. The coach talking to James isn't describing the image vaguely when he says "how you flung your body at the start." This quote paints a picture in your mind and shows that James is very into the sport and is determined to obtain a victory by how he flung his body at the start. Being determined, victorious and living life to the fullest can make a person achieve happiness and fulfillment in life which can be seen in the poem "To James" by Frank Home and many other poems including "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes.
People are sometimes very unhappy and feel that their life hasn't been fulfilled. This is all because of obstacles and difficulties that they have in their way on the road to achieving their goals. The poems "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes and "To James" by Frank Home have specific elements and techniques that are used to inform a person how to achieve happiness and fulfillment in their lives.
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