Langston Hughes Salvation Analysis

Many people sacrifice their beliefs and values to be accepted in society and to win the societies approval. George Orwell in “Shooting an elephant” and Langston Hughes in “Salvation” deal with the issue of “fitting in” in very different ways.

'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.

Langston Hughes’ short essay, “Salvation,” is a controversial yet interesting story that brings many conflicts between people in society. He discusses his personal point of view about his religious experience. Although religion has impacted many people throughout the years, it is still an extremely debatable topic. Many people believe that if you go to church you’ll be good for the rest of your life and just because you convince them as kid to behave a certain way, it will stop them from making poor choices, but it does not always work that way. Religion has historically been a problem for so long; it has divided humanity in so many ways. This story represents how much religion can use fear to gain power, but it also brings a sense of hope

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.

Langston Hughes was one of the first black men to express the spirit of blues and jazz

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.

In "Salvaiton", the main point that Hughes is trying to get across is that he "believed" in something only because it was what he was told was right. There is evidence of where he mentions "I'd better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved." Hughes also mentions that one of his fellow peers at one point had said how "He was tired of sitting, so let's get up and get saved." It is clear that throughout the essay, Hughes delivers an image of confusion and seeing people as hypocrites and it really gives an understanding of what Hughes was going through. The structure of the essay also allows the reader to understand and follow the confusion and these experiences as they unfold on young Langston.

Salvation is defined as the deliverance from sin and its consequences. In a Christianity sense, salvation is when a person accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior, and they believe the fact that he died for the sins of Christians. The term of salvation is often referred to as being “saved”. Salvation is when one delivers not only their body in a physical to the church and God, but it is also a committee to Jesus mentally and spiritually. Getting saved can be a very pressuring and life changing decision. That is sometimes forced upon young adolescents. Ultimately it can cause one to question their spiritually sometimes even damaging their belief in Jesus. In Langston Hughes’

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown,” tells the tale of a man whose Puritan beliefs were shaken to the core because reality turned out to be much different than he was taught in catechism. Goodman Brown showed readers how much he believed in his family’s goodness when he claimed “We have been a race of honest men and good Christians… We are a people of prayer, and good works, to boot, and abide no such wickedness” (Hawthorne 247). Because of this, Brown is surprised when he comes to know that people he thought were holy were in fact advocates for the devil and sinners- especially his wife Faith. People that he held in the highest regard were nothing but the lowest of the low to him now. He becomes surly, loses all faith in humanity, and develops a bitter worldview after this revelation.

“Salvation” is a wonderful narrative by Langston Hughes explaining his first time attending church. The story is portrayed in both a book and film version. Both versions do their jobs by explaining how Langston felt when he falsely claimed he was saved by Christ. Each version has different strengths and weaknesses, but the book is dull compared to the film. The film gives a better insight into Langston’s life;therefore, the film version is superior to the book.

Langston Hughes’ dedication to depicting the bona fide aspects of black life leads him to discuss struggle. One of the most omnipresent themes in black life, at the time of Hughes, is the constant struggle they face every

Langston Hughes is one the most renowned and respected authors of twentieth century America not simply one of the most respected African-American authors, though he is certainly this as well, but one of the most respected authors of the period overall. A large part of the respect and admiration that the man and his work have garnered is due to the richness an complexity of Hughes' writing, both his poetry and his prose and even his non-fictions. In almost all of his texts, Hughes manages at once to develop and explore the many intricacies and interactions of the human condition and specifically of the experience growing up and living as a black individual in a white-dominated and explicitly anti-Black society while at the same time, while at the same time rendering his human characters and their emotions in a simple, straightforward, and immensely accessible fashion. Reading the complexity behind the surface simplicity of his works is at once enjoyable and edifying.

Hughes wrote two poems that generated a lot of discussion about religion and African-Americans. One was “Drama for Winter Night (Fifth Avenue),” the other was “Goodbye Christ.” Once when Hughes was asked about

In Langston Hughes 's autobiographical anecdote, “Salvation,” the author reflects on his childhood, and also examines the basis on which his religious views were founded. Hughes 's nonfiction piece, written in adulthood, allows him to look back on his past and reconsider what he learned about salvation, as well as organized religion and conformity, as a child. Because of this inquiry, he begins to question the ways in which adults pressure young people to conform to their views of religion, even without having the deep feeling of faith required. When people are young, they are often asked to conform to roles that they don’t really understand or think deeply about, and religious duty is thus carried on without a lot of free will. Langston Hughes divulges the hypocrisy and the fraudulent faith of the Church and its indoctrinated members through irony and his own indoctrination into his damning salvation. The church service pressures and bullies young Hughes into falsifying his salvation. This ceremony proves that the church values tradition over faith.