Analyzing Langston Hughes's 'Salvation'

'Salvation', by Langston Hughes is part of an autobiographical work written in 1940. The author narrates a story centering on a revival gathering that happened in his childhood. During the days leading up to the event, Hughes' aunt tells him repeatedly that he will be 'saved', stressing that he will see a light and Jesus will come into his life. He attends the meeting but when Jesus fails to appear, he is forced by peer pressure to lie and go up and be 'saved'. Hughes uses his story to illustrate how easy it is for children to misinterpret adults and subsequently become disillusioned.

In most people's lives, there comes a point in time where their perception changes abruptly; a single moment in their life when they come to a sudden realization. In Langston Hughes' 'Salvation', contrary to all expectations, a young Hughes is not saved by Jesus, but is saved from his own innocence.

He goes into depth about hoping for something to happen, anything. He expresses himself of what was going through him excitedly for example the author says, “So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me.” (182) He describes his situation attempting to make some sort of relationship with God. He creates an anxious tone in order to demonstrate just how important having a connection was valuable to him. Why having a connection to God was important at that time is because before the big revival was over they called the kids to convert them. When it was time to bring his spiritual needs, he was told by his aunt “when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! …I believed her.” (182) Hughes punctuation creates an ethos tone of voice by being persuaded by his aunt. The author may employ pathos through his emotional language. This rhetorical appeal is often used to emphasize his emotional response towards how he feels about being “saved.” The outpouring of his emotions towards getting “saved” was a big concern that he was trying to achieve. He implicated how not only was he expected to be touched by the presence of God, but every other kid his age. This is how the writer was discussing about him being open about the idea of being “saved.”

Langston Hughes’s personal narrative “Salvation” is a recollection of Hughes’s experience with salvation at a religious revival at his aunt’s church. He recounts his experience in order to describe how it led to his enormous guilt over deceiving his aunt and the congregation and how it stemmed his disbelief in religion. His ironic tone and vivid imagery plays a key role in the development of the conflict and the complications that he faces. In order to dramatize suspenseful moments and magnify key points, he uses an array of rhetorical devices.

In most people's lives, there comes a point in time where their perception changes abruptly; a single moment in their life when they come to a sudden realization. In Langston Hughes' "Salvation", contrary to all expectations, a young Hughes is not saved by Jesus, but is saved from his own innocence.

Salvation means for most people that this is when their perception changes in life and about life. Salvation is when someone comes to a certain realization that things around them are changing, and the way they once looked at life is now different. Salvation relates to the story of a young individual in this story name Langton that was saved from his own innocence.

The pressure of seeing all his other peers also played a major role in his decision. His fear of being “left all alone on the mourners' bench” incited him to become saved. When he witnessed the last boy on the bench go fourth and be saved, Langston suddenly felt the pressure of the whole church come down on him. Especially that of his Aunt Reed, she sobbed to Langston "Langston, why don't you come? Why don't you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don't you come?" This was the last straw this pressure eventually caused Langston to get saved out of deceit. When Langston tried to go to bed that night his feelings of dishonesty had overcome him. He cried not tears of joy but tears of regret and confusion “But I was really crying because I couldn't bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn't seen Jesus, and that now I didn't believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn't come to help me.” He cried because he felt in his heart that he lied to his Aunt Reed and the whole church.

The details provided in the book explain the story moderately well. In the book, Langston writes about how much pressure he felt from the altar to be saved by Christ. The book paints a good visual picture on how crowded and hot the church was. In the book , Langston explains how devoted

The short story "Salvation," which is part of Hughes' larger biography The Big Sea, recounts the author's experience as a twelve year old boy attending a church meeting where he is called to come find Jesus. Hughes was not anti-religious but was certainly not a devout Christian and had several controversial run-ins with religious people in his own community, and thus his description and treatment of religion in this story is of special significance. As a

Peer pressure could come from a series of people. In many cases adults pressure children to act, dress, and submit to different situations in life. Salvation by Langston Hughes brings forth a very relatable topic to the reader’s eyes.The author’s purpose of Salvation is strictly to bring light to the role adults play in children's decision making. In other words the author expressed a time he was pressured to believe and do as adults say and he also dicuss the negative affect being pressured had on his

As we all know growing up is not easy. As children we want to please are parents, relatives and even our teachers. Growing up as a child we can feel pressure into doing something that we do not want to do. We want to please the adults that are in our lives on a daily basis. In the story, Salvation, Hughes recalls just how far he went in order to please his aunt and the church member in being saved but in reality he knows he told a lie, a lie that burden his soul for a lifetime, just to please the adults around him.

Apart from his apparent disgust for the desolate life that the African Americans were subjected to, Langston Hughes also portrays an evident mistrust of religion, not necessarily towards religion itself but particularly towards those individuals who use religion as a cloak to conceal their true duplicitous and oppressive nature. In arguably he’s most controversial poem, Goodbye Christ; Langston Hughes takes on the role of a disillusioned Christian and repudiates the doctrines set forth in America, which was supposedly a Christian country. After his visit to the Soviet Union in 1932, Langston Hughes experienced the mechanisms of Socialism; he immediately noted the differences between the Soviet Union and his own country, America. Whereas,

Many African American authors have written against towards being repressed for the color of their skin. Through their writing they have shared what it meant to be black in a time of oppression and segregation. Authors such as Hughes, McKay, Bontemps, and Bennett have shared with us how they fought against racial oppression with dignity and nobility towards those that kept them as objects and treated them as animals. Through their writing we learn of a time of when and how a single race molded a literary movement. We learn beyond that that the creation of civilization started in Africa. Most significantly we learn that for a brighter future we must fight for it ourselves.

Hughes conveys his up and down feelings throughout the story. He confesses early on his aunt telling him all the great details about Jesus. He had heard older people saying the same and he believed. As the younger children were walking to Jesus he patiently waited for Jesus to come to him. After the elders prayed around them nearly all the children were getting baptized. It seems as though they were only participating in consideration of the adults. Langston still had not felt Jesus come to him nevertheless when the adults became restless he decided to lie. Which in return made him feel guilty, but his aunt believed he was crying because he was saved. In religion people can be pushy and brainwash others into believing even if they feel nothing.

Religion is a big deal for my culture. I was taught to go to church every Sunday, praise the Lord, and always pray. I grew up going to Sunday school, and being all around the church environment. Until I was about 15, I started to play club volleyball, and we played the tournaments on Sunday. Whenever I didn’t have a tournament, I would always go to church. My grandpa was always the one to take me. No one else in