`` Salvation `` By Langston Hughes

'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.

     The innocence shown by the young boy at the beginning of the story can be attributed to many factors, the main reason being his Auntie Reed. She goes on talking for days about the big revival. 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

Children may have to attend a school that is associated with their religion. It is always possible that this gives the child a different quality/balance of education. They may struggle to understand other people‘s religion or lifestyle choices. They may become confused or isolated and

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

As time has passed humanity still tends to separate each other based on our racial being rather than seeing each other as one human race. Langston Hughes’s, “A New Song,” published in 1938 introduces the idea of a new vision of social relations in American society. Hughes’s original version of this poem written in 1933, does not encompass his growing anger on this subject that is dwelled upon in his published version. However, with Hughes’s powerful tone and word choice throughout his 1938 rendition, his reader is able to understand his urge to transform America into an interracial culture. (Central Idea) His poem voices the importance of transforming society into a multiethnic unity and working-class established through cultural ties between whites and blacks. (Thesis) Hughes voices this crucial need to change through his emphasis on African American’s past struggles as opposed to the new dream, his militant tone, and through expressing the role that the establishment of cultural ties plays in society.

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.

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’

One of the most discussed topics in the modern world is children indoctrination into religion. Children aren't developed enough to decide in what to believe or disbelieve. Everyone is born without believing in a religion until it is either forced on them or they are developed enough to decide if one of the religions ''works'' for them or not. Mostly, parents are the most influential part in a child life. They decide what a proper education is to their successor and they impose their ideas to their child.

Langston Hughes, born on February 1, 1902, was an American poet, novelist, and social activist. His work depicts the hardships and poverty of the Negro life in America. Langston became one of the most popular writers during the Harlem Renaissance. His books include The Negro Mother (1931), The Ways of White Folks (1934), The Big Sea (1940), and etc. Salvation, a short chapter in The Big Sea, describes a horrific event in Hughes’s early life as he approaches the age of 13. Hughes attended his Auntie Reed’s church to be saved from sin, but he was not really saved. He encounters the lost of hope and faith in Jesus; which will cause him to question about religion. In a chapter in Langston Hughes’s autobiography The Big Sea (1940) called Salvation, Hughes regrets his decision to stand up and get “saved” at the revival.

“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 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.

Langston Hughes in several poems denounced religion, inferring that religion did not exist any longer. In reading these poems, the reader canes that Hughes was expressing his feelings of betrayal and abandonment, against his race, by religion and the church. Hughes had a talent for writing poems that would start a discussion. From these discussions, Hugh es could only hope for realization from the public, of how religion and the church treated the Black race.

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.