preview

Langston Hughes Salvation Essay

Decent Essays

“Salvation,” by Langston Hughes is a short story which is the autobiography of a young man who has an emotional confrontation with religion. Oftentimes it is debated whether the short story is a serious piece, rather than an amusing piece. Salvation is a serious piece due to its recognition of peer pressure while disproving traditional church belief and indicating a meaningful point in the author’s life. Salvation illustrates the influence peer pressure can have on a person’s thoughts and decisions. In the short story, Langston had been participating in a ceremony to relieve the young children of sin and ‘bring them to Jesus.’ Despite everybody in the church’s expectation, Langston still had not “saw Jesus,” resulting in the entire church to engage in prayer for Langston, which included Langston’ aunt crying, on her knees, for him to be saved. Feeling guilty for disappointing the church members and more importantly his aunt, Langston lied and pretended to be ‘saved’ to satisfy everybody. While lying is a sin on its own, lying while inside of the church is considered highly punishable, …show more content…

Although the story is mostly an autobiographical experience, there is a serious, slightly indirect, theme that typical Christian religious beliefs may be a lie. Many older folk told a tale of how you would see a light and something would happen, indicating that you have been saved by the lord. During the ceremony of which Langston participated in, all of the children amongst him claimed to have been saved except him and another young man, Westley. Due to their eventual impatience, both Langston and Westley lied claiming they had been saved, with Westley using God’s name in vain during the process. Those two actions are deemed highly punishable in religious belief yet both of them went unpunished. By sharing this personal experience, Langston targets the misleading beliefs under which church goers live

Get Access