`` Salvation `` By Langston Hughes

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].

As time passed the congregation became more and more animated, wailing for Hughes to come up and be saved. Hughes became more and more impatient and extremely agitated. At the same time he must have been very curious as to why all the others were going up to the altar.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’

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.

His aunt, being a dutiful, archetypal devout, “spoke of it for days.” (547) She once elucidated, “when you were saved you saw a bright light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life!” (547) Polysyndeton is used to illustrate his aunt’s enthusiasm toward the event. As well, the quick, overbearing nature of this passage, paired with using exclamation marks powerfully conveys the expectation and perturbation felt by Hughes to experience deliverance in this fashion. A concrete shift in attitude is seen when he says, “I believed her.” (547) This variation on syntax foresees his apprehension. Come the day of salvation, Langton is expecting to physically see and feel his Lord, “So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me.” (547) As the sermon proceeded, one by one, the sinners went to Jesus. However, Langston “kept

“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

The words that the author chooses for the speech makes the tone of the story suspenseful. He also makes the the tone of his speech sound more realistic. By adding other characters and by having them speak in the present tense it feels like it is happening in that exact moment. Doing so increased the chance of people believing they were actually under attack. Referring back to it being suspenseful. Captain Lansing is speaking at the end and sort of leaves of with a cliffhanger when he sees i believe an alien. He also indicates that he is positive it was not a meteor or anything of that nature. The reality was that aliens were attacking earth and already millions of soldiers have perished.