Religion and Race in Langston Hughes' 'Salvation'

'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.

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.”

Furthermore, Hughes uses the rhetorical device of allusion when he writes about his aunt’s bringing him to the church for a special meeting. When he writes, “Then just before the revival ended, they held a special meeting for children, ‘to bring the young lambs to the fold’’’ (1), he attempts to correlate his invitation to salvation to a Biblical parable. Along with his reference to the Bible, he conveys the church member’s excitement with vivid imagery. He illustrates the church’s setting as being infuse with “all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell”, and he also describes the preacher’s sermon as a “wonderful rhythmical sermon” (3). Conjointly, Hughes presents imagery of the churchgoers and alludes to a Biblical story in order to demonstrate the magnitude of the religious enthusiasm of the members of the church.

Langston Hughes clearly connects with a wide range of audiences through the simplicity that surrounds his poetry. The beauty of this manner in which he wrote his poetry, is that it grasp people by illustrating his narratives of the common lifestyles experienced by the current American generation. His art form expresses certain questionable ideologies of life and exposes to the audience what it takes to fully comprehend what being an American truly means. Each individual poem describes and illustrates the strength and hardships the African American community was experiencing. Through his literature art form of poetry, Hughes was able to convey the common assertions of

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.

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’

Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and

It is, thus, a pressuring and life-changing moment. Langston Hughes, the author and narrator of the composition, “Salvation,” is met with a barrage of thought and emotion come deliverance. Langton’s naivete mistook his aunt’s metaphoric description of salvation, and this led to an absence of spiritual epiphany when the time came. Ultimately, this evoked great dismay and skepticism toward his indoctrinated ideology, causing him to lose faith in the church and

“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.

After reading Langston Hughes “Salvation” I believe Mr. Hughes purpose of writing this essay was to inform us about how social conformity can affect us in our decision making. Mr. Hughes describes about how his aunt has been talking about this day for days and how it will change his life. And how he will be one with god, as if he wasn’t already, but Mr. Hughes being the impressable child that he is, wanted the feeling that his aunt and fellow church goers were experiencing. I feel like the reason why this event is so special to Mr. Langston Hughes is because it was the day that he lost a piece of his self. The reasoning behind my thought is Mr. Hughes gets to the alter and waits silently for god to appear to him, but when everyone around him appear to experience the magic of god, Young Hughes starts to doubt his self and the faith of god. With all the noise and commotion going on from the preacher and fellow church goers, singing and preaching, to the older church members crying around young Hughes. The way Hughes gave us vivid descriptions of the church it almost feels like Mr. Hughes was in a twilight zone.

Salvation begins with Hughes looking back into his life. Telling the readers about how he was saved at the age of twelve, but it was all a lie. A religious revival was going to be held at his aunt’s church. His aunt has been talking about this revival every night for weeks. How some harsh sinners have came to the lord and were saved. That week at church they made the kids knell at the mourners bench and wait to be saved. Everyone in the church started to pray and sing while waiting on the kids to feel the light rushing through their bodies. Then one by one the kids felt the light and stood up to be saved. All but two, Hughes and another boy still sat at the bench waiting. It was getting late and the boys were getting tired. The other boy said

"Salvation" by Langston Hughes was about himself when he was twelve years old at the church. His aunt talked about that, when he was saved, he would see the light and Jesus himself. When it came time to “be saved” as everyone else got up and rejoiced, He stayed because he didn’t exactly see anything. He eventually made the decision to get up to go home and to not force people to stay any longer. Langston was telling us that he stopped believing in Jesus because he thought for himself and that you should too.

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.

struggle of the Afro Americans. It is a dream which has not come true and will