Religious Experience In Langston Hughes's 'Salvation'

His aunt is really excited about him joining the church community: “my aunt spoke of it days ahead”. With his aunt at the church, young Hughes gets sat in the front of the church and with the entire congregation looking at him and the other kids that were getting ready to be saved. One by one they all experience God and His divine touch up to the point where only Hughes is left sitting on the bench. After some more time, he decides that he would rather loose his belief in God and lie about his presence than to keep everyone else waiting and looking at him. He lies and gets up and moves to the “saved” side. By lying and pleasing the society, we find out the effect that this has on the congregation: “the whole room broke in a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise”[pg. 181].

'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

Just like any other kid would, Hughes listens and believes word-for-word what his aunt tells him: "She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul." (181) This naivete is characteristic of youths of that age group. After all, he "heard a great many old people say the same thing" (181) and it seemed to him "they ought to know" (181). With all the hype and anticipation surrounding this event, Hughes is certain something is bound to happen. His disappointment is manifested when he does not literally see Jesus. From what he has been told, Hughes is expecting to see a human incarnation of Jesus. He is actually more than just expecting to see him; he badly wants to be saved! Seeing Westley give up so carelessly, triggers an awkward feeling inside of Hughes. The thought that Jesus is not going to show up after all is starting to grow. That leads him to eventually give up and join Westley in lying. It is only at night that he comes to the realization that he was fooled. All the stories and preaching he heard were just fabulations. He wanted to see Jesus, but Jesus did not come at his rescue. His perception changed because he went from being an innocent child to someone who has acquired the personal experience to make his own judgements.

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.

Hughes uses the setting of the church and living in a small town to convey his theme. As in a small town where everyone knows most everyone else, the culture of the church is same. The expectation within the church is that everyone must be saved at the revival. During the revival services, the kids sat in the front pew of the church. At the end preacher’s sermon, he invited all the kids up to the alter to be saved. The kids, being young and unaware, joined him in the alter for a time of prayer about their salvation. The situation slowly progressed with more of the church members coming to the alter for prayer. Within this gathering, the children’s’ family members came first and soon the entire church made their way up to pray for the kid’s salvation. Eventually, each child made their way forward and got saved. By the end, there were only two boys left sitting in the pews. Members of the church begged and pleaded with them to come forward, accept the gift of salvation and be saved. Finally, one boy said” I’m hot I’ll go get saved now.” This situation shows how society is constantly

The short essay by Langston Hughes takes place in Kansas during the year 1915. Langton’s mother had left and went north in search of a job. Meanwhile, his father abandoned the family and went to Mexico, with no plans on coming back. Leaving Langston to live with his grandmother. However, after his grandmother’s death, Mary and James Reed took Langston in and began to raise him as if he were their own. In “Salvation”, focusing on a specific traumatic event, Hughes describes the memory of his aunt and a revival held at her church, touching on topics such as family pressure and peer pressure alike, fear of disappointing or being a disappointment, right from wrong, and the guilt experienced during the aftermath.

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’

“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.

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

James Emanuel describes how Hughes brought attention to the importance of religion in Black history when he writes, “Religion, because of its historical importance during and after slavery, is an undeniably useful theme. . . . [Hughes, a] writer whose special province for almost forty-five years was more recent Black experience, the theme is doubly vital” (Emanual 914). I agree with James Emanuel. Hughes could

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.