In Hughes poem "Mother to Son" the tone of the poem seem sad but hopeful. I think that the mother in the story is trying to say to her son that even though life isn't easy you just have to keep pushing on.
To have hope that it will get better. She says that you can't give up because it will only make things harder. It's like she is encouraging the son to push on even when things get hard. "I'se been a-climbin on" she says. Showing her son that if she can do it he can to.
I found Wrights short story to be a little different though. I didn't really get a sense of racism ion Hughes writings. It was more just about having a hard life. In Wrights short story there is racism there.
Not only towards the workers but to the son of one of the families. His name was Dave. He said "They treat me like a mule, n then they beat me". I think that Dave has a lot of anger built up inside of him because he really is just a boy. But he works so hard for Mr. Hawkins and he felt that he had nothing to show for it because he didn't get his money. The money was given to his mother instead.
He was not responsible enough to have the gun clearly because he ended up shooting the mule on accident. But he did not want to spend the next two years paying of that debt so he got on a train and went away. He just wanted to prove he could be a man. So he said he would go somewhere where he could be.
citation:
Hughes, L. (2013). Mother to Son. In M. Loeffelholz, N. Baym, W. Franklin, P.F. Gura, J. Klinkowitz, A. Krupat, R.S. Levine... P.B. Wallace (Eds.), The Norton anthology of American literature (Shorter 8th ed.) (pg.2223) New York, NY: Norton. (Original work published 1967).
Wright, R. (2013). The Man Who Was Almost a Man. In M. Loeffelholz, N. Baym, W. Franklin, P.F. Gura, J. Klinkowitz, A. Krupat, R.S. Levine... P.B. Wallace (Eds.), The Norton anthology of American literature (Shorter 8th ed.) (pgs. 2245-2253). New York, NY: Norton. (Original work published 1928).
In Trifles the men are aware of the differences between them and the women, but they don't understand the importance of things that seem trivial to them. In this time period women didn't have many rights and it was believed that their place was at home and men were viewed as the superior, therefore they were in charge.
As the story develops we learn that John Wright seemed to be a controlling husband. We learn that John Wright was controlling when Mrs. Hale states, "I wonder how it would seem to never have any children around. No, Wright wouldn't like the bird- a thing that sang.
She used to sing. He killed that, too." (Glaspell, 1916, p.1935) After the women discover the dead bird they determine that was the motive for killing her husband because that bird was important to her. Wright controlled all of his wife's life and she finally had enough and decided to kill him so that she could be mentally free even if it meant not being physically free.
The men were not able to discover the motive in the home because they view all the simple things the women noticed were odd as trivial, they saw no importance to the stitching in the quilt and they didn't know about the bird. I think the women choose not to tell the men about the motive they discovered because they understand why she did it, they understand that Wright stole her life from her and then stole her last bit of happiness.
Had the men understand that women are human too and actually taken interest in some of their wives interest they could've understood the small things that were evidence. Had Wright treated his wife like a human he would still be alive.
Glaspell, S. (2013) The Norton Anthology American Literature 8th edition. New York, NY. W. W. Norton & Co (Original work posted 1916)