Literally analysis or explication of the poems. Mother to Son by Langston Hughes' I wrote the explication of the poem "mother to son"...

Here is how I have annotated the poem, according to the question in my book, which asks:

"How is the central metaphor of climbing stairs a particularly appropriate idea for conveying this poem's theme?"

If I were doing a paper on it, I would combine Speaker, Tone, and Parts in the the first half of the paper; Metaphor, Imagery. and Theme in the second half; and I would leave technical elements for the end (Meter, etc...)

Speaker: an African-American mother, probably a domestic, encouraging her son, probably approaching manhood, to keep climbing the socio-economic ladder.

Parts: It's one stanza; a dramatic monologue.  The son, who many not be present (since he doesn't reply) is the recipient of this apostrophe (direct address to someone not present)

Tone: positive; encouraging.  Filled with lyricism, Black English, bluesy/Gospel metaphors

Metaphor: the stairs.  She's encouraging him to keep climbing, liker her, not to sit on the step of complacency.

Imagery: visual images of struggle: "tacks," "splinters," "light" vs. "dark"

Theme: hard work; self-determination; generational differences (uneducated parent vs. educated son); gender differences (female speaker vs. male audience)

Meter: free verse; no discernible meter; no rhyme scheme; lots of end-stopped lines (with commas, periods, colons at the ends)