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Sargeant's Metamorphosis In On The Road By Langston Hughes

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In “Liberating Christ: Sargeant’s Metamorphosis in Langston Hughes’s “On the Road,” Carolyn P. Walker talks about what she feels the story “On the Road” is about. She does make some interesting points, but I feel like some of them are not correct. Walker’s main points support the opinion that the story is based on racism and also claims that it is a “Reenactment of the Biblical story [Samson and Delilah]” (749). While racism may be touched upon in the story, I feel that the main point of this story is to show the influence of money in Christian society.

Walker first makes the claim that the snow is “a symbol of the white oppressive world” (745), and Sargeant is trying to ignore it. I can see why she may think this way but, there was so many …show more content…

I believe that Sargeant saw the church and felt like he finally had found somewhere that would help him, so that is why he shook off the snow. He gained some confidence and hope and was preparing to step inside the building. Walker makes the point that Sargeant has tried every way he knew how to, but nothing worked, so he had to resort to force (748). This is a clear resolution to make. He begins trying to break down the church door and let himself in. soon a couple police officers and a crowd of people surround him to try and get him to leave, so Sargeant grabs the pillars. Walker compares Sargeant to Sampson from the book of Judges (749) because sergeant pulls down the pillars of the church. Perhaps Walker is on to something, but there are many differences in the two stories. Sargeant relied only on his own strength; He never asked for God’s help, while Sampson prayed for strength. Really, I saw no sign that Sargeant was a religious man at any point in the story. The only real similarity between the two stories would be that they were both destroying some kind of distorted

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