Essay on Salvation (Langston Hughes)

Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright is a must read for any Christian looking to expand their understanding of faith. Surprised by Hope gives us a full understanding of salvation as it is revealed in the Bible. This book also tells us how we should act in our lives and in this world as God’s redeemed people. It reveals incredible insight that is important to us because it explains just how crucial our role in this world is. Wright talks about the way things currently are and how they will be with the resurrection and our salvation. The book expands on the Christian mission and what it means to live with hope and faith and attempts to answer the very famous question: What is heaven?

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.

The well known poet Langston Hughes was an inspiring character during the Harlem Renaissance to provide a push for the black communities to fight for the rights they deserved. Hughes wrote his poetry to deliver important messages and provide support to the movements. When he was at a young age a teacher introduced him to poets Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, and they inspired him to start his own. Being a “darker brother,” as he called blacks, he experienced and wanted his rights, and that inspired him. Although literary critics felt that Langston Hughes portrayed an unattractive view of black life, the poems demonstrate reality. Hughes used the Blues and Jazz to add effect to his work as well as his extravagant word use and literary

At the realization of the truth, John breaks down and sobs, not only from seeing how his race had been devastated before, but also at the realization that all the knowledge he had gathered as a child was false. In his unyielding desire to learn more, he never thought of what would happen once he gained the knowledge that he wanted, and if he would be satisfied if it revealed something he didn’t want to learn.

He goes into depth about hoping for something to happen, anything. He expresses himself of what was going through him excitedly for example the author says, “So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me.” (182) He describes his situation attempting to make some sort of relationship with God. He creates an anxious tone in order to demonstrate just how important having a connection was valuable to him. Why having a connection to God was important at that time is because before the big revival was over they called the kids to convert them. When it was time to bring his spiritual needs, he was told by his aunt “when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! …I believed her.” (182) Hughes punctuation creates an ethos tone of voice by being persuaded by his aunt. The author may employ pathos through his emotional language. This rhetorical appeal is often used to emphasize his emotional response towards how he feels about being “saved.” The outpouring of his emotions towards getting “saved” was a big concern that he was trying to achieve. He implicated how not only was he expected to be touched by the presence of God, but every other kid his age. This is how the writer was discussing about him being open about the idea of being “saved.”

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 "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 pressure of seeing all his other peers also played a major role in his decision. His fear of being “left all alone on the mourners' bench” incited him to become saved. When he witnessed the last boy on the bench go fourth and be saved, Langston suddenly felt the pressure of the whole church come down on him. Especially that of his Aunt Reed, she sobbed to Langston "Langston, why don't you come? Why don't you come and be saved? Oh, Lamb of God! Why don't you come?" This was the last straw this pressure eventually caused Langston to get saved out of deceit. When Langston tried to go to bed that night his feelings of dishonesty had overcome him. He cried not tears of joy but tears of regret and confusion “But I was really crying because I couldn't bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn't seen Jesus, and that now I didn't believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn't come to help me.” He cried because he felt in his heart that he lied to his Aunt Reed and the whole church.

“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

Langston Hughes inspired others to reach their true potential in their work by using their own life as a catalyst:

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