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Langston Hughes and William Blake were both prolific writers. They wrote about various things that many people, especially African Americans, could relate to. Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” is a poem about a mother enlightening her son that life for her hasn’t been easy. “The Little Black Boy”, the poem written by William Blake, is about a little black boy who questions his mother on the differences between blacks and whites. The children in each poem learn a life lesson from their mother; however, they are learning about two different life lessons and the ages of the sons seem to differ in each one. Despite this difference, they both were remarkable. In both poems, the sons are learning about life issues. In “Mother to Son”, the narrator describes to her son that no matter what obstacles come in her way, she keeps climbing the stairs. "Tacks," "splinters," and other obstructions hinder her ascent, but she refuses to "set down on the steps." Looking deeper into the poem, the tacks placed on the staircase in the mother's path could be a specific oppressive incident placed there by another party. A splinter in the staircase is a negative consequence of the staircase itself. Therefore, the mother's "splint