We know by the language and perspective of the narrators that Both “Salvation” and “Araby” are coming-of-age stories told by an adult looking back on a painful childhood experience that results in an epiphany. What is the epiphany that occurs in “Salvation? What is the epiphany that occurs in “Araby?” Keep in mind that “Araby” is not a love story.
Please address comments to others by name so that we can all follow along.
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In “Salvation” the author goes throw a epiphany of believing that Jesus in not real. During the story it is mention that this is happening in a church and that along side him there were a few other kids in this process to “come to the lamp and be save”, most of the kids went with no second thought, while him and another kid stayed. Long were the hours in which both kids stayed but at the end this “friend” decide that he was tired of being there and just went along, meanwhile young Langston stood there waiting for Jesus, at the end he give up and went to be “saved” too. Later crying at night he had this epiphany that Jesus wasn’t real, that he could have waited for years and he would never get to see this light. Similarly, there is the story called, “Araby” in which the author also have a epiphany about love and reality. In the story he is a young boy that fell in love with a girl, his love was kind of obsessive, at the point that other regular stuff didn’t bring him any joy, or felt as important. It comes to his attention that he could buy her (the girl) something, a gift of a shop she mentioned, the kid went there with all this illusion to later find a empty store, almost with no light, and with a lot of noise. During this time and in that place he have the epiphany, that all of his efforts to buy a gift to the girl he love does not guarantee him, her love, reality is way different then what he could imagine, and he should focus on other more important things.
In these coming of age stories, both narrators reach a point of realization that hurt them but also awakened their new sense of reality. I believe both narrators faced pressure by desire and other people and because of that they experienced their epiphanies. In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, the time period of him seeking his salvation was during a time where every child, man, and woman had to be saved by Christ and if you weren’t you were considered “unsaved”. Langston’s epiphany took place when he realized that he wasn’t saved and he then struggled with believing in God afterwords because he did opposite of what was considered Christly which was lie. In “Araby” by James Joyce, the narrator was so pressured by his desire and love he had for Mangan’s sister he went to a marketplace without thinking of the time of day and what to expect when he got there. His epiphany in the end was he realized that the love he had for Mangan’s sister was infatuation and once he realized that he would return empty handed with no gift he felt like he failed at showing Mangan’s sister the love he had for her. He was left in the marketplace angry because of how he placed high value in a gift only to prove himself to his crush. Both of these stories are situational ironies because Langston expected to be saved but the opposite happened to him and the boy in “Araby” expected to please the girl he loved only to realize he was doing it for the wrong reasons.
I agree with you Regina, and am interested on your input for the dramatic irony present in both stories, as I didn’t realize that it was present in both stories until you said it. The ironic aspect of the Langston Hughes story was more clear to me, but I brushed off the idea for the other story, so respect on catching that. Besides that, I absolutely agree with both interpretations you made from the Langston’s struggle to find/be saved by god all the way to the boy in “Araby” realizing his emotions/actions were largely baseless. Since it is not meant to be a love story, his actions may be a way of overcompensation for issues in his life, and he may have just wanted the girls attention, as maybe he has issues with his family. It may be some sort of deep need for attention that led him to do that, and the obsession was a coping mechanism to take away from his own issues.
Regina, I agree with you completed, I honestly fail to realize that as you said, “both narrators faced pressure by desire”. I honestly didn’t saw that the wish to see the light as everyone else had told him could have a been a really stressful moment for him, like being concerned with the idea of what happens if he doesn’t see the light? Like he has to see the light otherwise what would it mean for him and his soul? On the other hand, similar to Langston, in Araby the boy should had felt so much pressure and urge to show that he is worthy for this girl, that he can be the “men” she needs. But apparently Araby it’s not a love story as Ms. Conway had said, and that there appear to be a more profound meaning to the story, one I haven’t found.
Regina, I agree with you that both narrators felt pressure from their desires. Throughout both stories, the narrators believed they would receive some sort of fulfillment either spiritually or emotionally. However, in the short story “Arby” the main character thought his desire for the girl and the bazaar would pull him out of his bleak life. And at the end of the story, it becomes apparent to him how engulfed he was in his fantasy.
I totally agree with your statement ”both narrators reach a point of realization that hurt them but also awakened their new sense of reality.” In both stories told by the narrators, the young boys were in a state of dependence from this feeling that felt right to them because it felt promising and alleviated their doubts and their own feelings but when they were faced with their own truth it hurt them once more to face their reality.
Junior, please respond to others by name so we can all follow along. Thanks!
Regina, I agree with you that “both narrators reach a point of realization that hurt them but also awakened their new sense of reality.” In “Salvation,” the experience to be “saved” only made the narrator disappointed in himself, but in the end it led to the fact that he lost faith in God. In “Araby,” the narrator’s experience is similar to the Hughes because at the end of the story the boy blames himself, but thereby gains a valuable lesson and realization about how much fantasy can affect a person’s perception. In both stories, the narrators go through youthful experiences that lead them to epiphany.
Regina, I agree with you that the narrators are awakened by their new sense of reality. “Salvation” is actually a short excerpt from Langston’s autobiography. There is a youtube documentary called, “Lanstong Hughes- Life and Times with Alice Walker, in which the question is asked, “Was Langston damaged by this church experiance?” Alice Walker who is being interviewed, answers that to Langston, the church experience was ” a great awakening,” in that he realized that other people think differently of your salvation, than you think of your salvation. Langstons biographer, Arnold Rampersad, goes on to add that Langston, recognized, respected, and admired faith especially of the older generation, even though he himself was not a believer. You might want to check it out because it supports your thought about awakening of Lansgston in , “Salvation.”
I too agree with you Regina on the fact that you stated how both of these narrators reached a point of realization within their stories. Considering the time and era where Langston Hughes was growing up I can guarantee that going to church and praising God was a crucial and very important part of his childhood. With him being so young and impressionable every little thing he did had a major impact on him.
Both short stories had a moment where the narrators have a epiphany at a younger age, however the content of this realization is very different between the two. For instance in the story “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, he begins by being excited and optimistic for the ritual, where boys coming of age (13) are embraced by Jesus. Young Langston believed what the older folk told him about how it should be, and expecting just that, Langston was crushed to see that that reality for them was not a reality for him. Langston came to the epiphany that he didn’t believe in Jesus (as much as he wanted to), and that religion in some aspects is false (fake people, rules broken with ought punishment, etc). On the other hand “Araby” took a very different turn, where the young boy fell desperately, and madly in love with a girl. However, near the end when his much awaited plan to buy her something was crushed, did he really come to the epiphany that he blew the importance of his mission out of control, and he acted foolishly due to his drive toward his attraction to a girl that had nearly no relation to him. He went through so much confusion and anguish for the love of a girl he barely interacted with, and who is likely (not said, but inferred) older than the boy.
Hello Jonathan, I like how you point out that content of this realization are different. I agree that the story and setting may be very different , i feel like both of the story has many themes in common. Both were met with epiphany when they were faced with ultimate reality check of their environment , friends , family and strangers. they both were met with similar emotion of sadness and anger at the end as they realized that reality they thought wasn’t real for them.
Jonathan, I believe that both stories have similar outcomes, which is disappointment. In “Salvation”, the boy was literally waiting hours for Jesus to come and save him from the bench in that hot church. At the end, he gave up pretending that he saw Jesus like everybody. Similarly in “Araby”, the boy has to give up his fantasy love story of Mangan’s sister and go on to live his life.
Fatu I agree with what you have said about both stories having similar outcomes and that outcome being disappointment . In “Salvation” the narrator is disappointed when in finds out the Jesus is not real and that Jesus would not be coming to save him and in “Araby” the narrator is disappointed when he realizes the girl who is is basically obsessed with is not real.
I agree with you Fatu, both of these stories have a grey and unexpected ending but because of this ending, I believe that the readers are able to comprehend that there is a difference between what we want to believe and what we know is true. For example, in Salvation, the boy was already doubtful about giving in to god and when he did the answer to his doubt was not as simple as he imagined.
The two stories have a common theme of first-person narrative from protagonist of coming age having their epiphany as they we deprived from their illusion and met with unwishful reality.
In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, protagonist’s aunt assured him that he would find bright light and he will find Jesus and he truly believed in her words. There were many sinful children to become part of the holy family where Jesus has found them. He wanted to be part of the family. But instead, he got an epiphany when he realizes that most of the children got up and pretended to have found Jesus by peer pressure from the surrounding adults, and that Jesus never came to him.
In short story “Araby”, the protagonist keeps building his idea of happiness to revolve around the girl as he detached from his surrounding which is bleak and uninteresting to him. He went to the bazaar without knowing how late it is, and with just one cent of the dream. He slowly wakes up from his illusion when he was met with delaying train, and finally got an epiphany from reality when he was met with closing stores and dark alleys.
Thanlwin I like how you went into great detail about both of the narrators stories to help explain why they were both so hurt after having there epiphany’s. I agree with what you had to say about “Salvation” the most because it was not only him that had an epiphany that day it was all of the children that were to be saved. They all came to the realization that they were not to be saved by Jesus and got up and pretended to be saved.
Chayadevi and Thanlwin I’m glad you mentioned the other children that were waiting to be saved on that bench in, “Salvation.” My take on it is that unless a child is raised and taught about spirituality at a very young age, by the time the reach the age mentioned in the story -(12-13), they are going to think of things more in a literal sense rather than in the spiritual. I believe the elders, the preacher, and even Langstons aunt who loved him, made a grave mistake in pressuring these children to leave that bench and get, “saved.” However, I also try to keep an open mind when thinking of the children that did go up. Although Langston and Westly were not seeing nor feeling Jesus come into their lives, maybe some of the other children did. The first girl went up crying, maybe she did see Jesus, Not literally of course the way Langston expected, but maybe spiritually some of the kids did feel they had been saved. We don’t know. The mention of the other kids at the bench waiting to be saved has a lot of significance about the outcome of Langstons expectations, experience and confusion in the story and i’m glad you touched on it. In the end, the onus is on the adults in this story, to not use children and Jesus, to make themselves a savior.
Thanlwin, thanks for the comments. You skirt very close to the heart of the epiphanies in both stories without quite explaining what happens. What is the most important realization in “Salvation?” Jesus doesn’t come to him, so what does this mean? And yes, in “Araby” the boy “keeps building his idea of happiness” as a way to give meaning to his bleak life. But what happens when he wakes from that illusion? What does it mean for him and his view of life?
In the short stories “Salvation” and “Araby” both of the narrators have to face two realizations that have the potential to hurt them. In “Salvation” the narrator has to face the realization that Jesus will not be “coming to save” him. The narrator in “Salvation” came to the realization that Jesus was not real, this came as a shock to him because his aunt had told him stories about being saved and how being saved would feel however when it was his timed to be saved none of these things happened for him.
In “Araby” this narrator comes to the realization that the girl who he is infatuated with does not exist. He sees this girl as a light in his life and becomes almost obsessed with it however when the light goes away and the darkness comes back he comes to the sad realization that the girl who he is obsessed with is not real.
Thank you Chayadevi for helping me understand a little further what Araby was about. Now that I’ve reviewed the story and read the comments it is clear that in Araby the boy was disappointed because he realized how caught up he was in his false sense of reality when it came to having high expectations of himself. Once he didn’t meet those expectations he felt disgusted with himself.
Regina, it’s wonderful that a fellow member of our group can help in your understanding of a story. That’s the beauty of the discussion boards. It also shows that you have an open mind.I’m learning all the time too as I read comments in the forum.
Chayadevi! I must say your explanation about both stories are great. As you mentioned in ”Salvation” the narrator was faced with the realization that Jesus will not be coming to save him because he was not real and this resulted in him loosing faith in Jesus. I think the pressure we face from outside sources make us do things just to fit in and that is exactly what the boy did. In ”Araby” the narrator also faced a sad realization when he realized the girl who as you mentioned he was obsessed with did not exist. This obsession as you mentioned only existed in the imagination of the boy.
Chayadevi I completely agree with you that both character realizations hurt them. You explain right into it that in “Salvation’ Jesus doesn’t save Langston when he needs it and Araby is in the lost of hope by what his imagination made up. I like how you make a connection to both stories how this negativity affects our characters.
Brian, it’s great to agree with other comments. Can you enlarge on the discussion too?
Both stories “Araby” by James Joyce and “Salvation” by Langston Hughes have similar epiphanies which leads to disappointment. In “Araby” by James Joyce, a boy experiences a crush on his friend Mangan’s sister. He was so consumed by this love that he gave up school and everything else in his life. He is so obsessed with the girl that he places himself in the front room of his house so that he could he see the girl passing every morning. That being said, the epiphany in this story is when the boy arrived very late to the bazaar and started to realize that his fantasy of a romantic and exotic evening with the girl changed in a negative way. The ironic end underlines the boy’s epiphany and demonstrates the foolishness of his childhood imagination. Similarly, in “Salvation”, Hughes wants to indicate that even though religious belief can be encouraging in somebody’s life, when a person is pressured into one thing, they can feel unfilled in emotion and that could result in something more thoughtful. As the boy and his friends sit in a hot church all day hoping to be saved literally by Jesus, all his friends got up one by one pretending they have been saved. Eventually, the boy has no choice but to get up and go with his friends pretending that he saw Jesus only because of the pressure of his aunt. The purpose of this story is to show the protagonists disappointment, which lead him to feeling lost and ashamed. He loses his faith in Jesus because he lies to the church and his aunt.
Fatu, your remarks about “Salvation” are very good. The boy in the story goes rides on a roller coaster of emotions, but the profound epiphany he has is that he no longer believes in Jesus. I hope you’ll revisit “Araby” and maybe browse through some of the comments in this Db for a slightly larger view of that story. As I keep writing, “Araby” is not a love story. It a story about a boy striving to find meaning and light in his very bleak life. It is not just a commentary on infatuation; otherwise, we might find some hints of humor in this story.
Hi Fatu. I really liked your comparison of the two stories. I agree that both characters feel disappointed at the end due to their realizations. Both stories definitely result in the narrators losing something important to them. I think you recounted and compared the two stories really well.
Josh, it’s great to agree with Fatu. But we’re trying to expand the conversation. Is there anything you can add to that agreement?
Hi Fatu. I like your comparison of these two stories, and I agree with your assessment of “redemption”. In this story, the narrator goes from being full of hope for Jesus to losing faith at the end. The process in the middle is full of contradictions, and the confrontation between ideas and hopes leads to the epiphany at the end. This is a story of disappointment, which makes the narrator’s epiphany all the more thought-provoking.
In the short stories “Arby” by James Joyce and “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, both of the story’s narrators realize how deluded they had been by their expectations. In both stories, the main characters had expected to reach some sort of fulfillment either emotionally or spiritually but instead were left with pain. In the story “Arby” the main character had spent the majority of the story engulfed in this fantasy that he had built of the girl and the bazaar, that when he actually goes he become frustrated with himself. At that moment he had realized that the fulfillment he thought would receive from the experience was just a fantasy. I think he expected to feel euphoric at that moment, that this girl would give him a new sense of purpose. However, his expectations were set too high, and became disappointed when they weren’t lived up to. In the case of “Salvation,” the main character had expected to experience an intense spiritual moment and was led by others to believe this. However, as though the ceremony had gone on he had slowly realized that his expectations were false. When we are young it can be easy to build things up in our heads and be disappointed when it doesn’t play out the way we want.
Serafina, I’m struck by your use of the word “deluded,” which you apply to both protagonists. I think you’re so right that in both cases, the young boys have nurtured a somewhat fantastical hope. As I commented to someone else here, it seems that boy in “Salvation” loses faith, while the boy in “Araby” suffers a loss of hope. It is not the loss of love suffered in “Araby” because, in truth, he is not in love with anything real.
Serafina, I love your comment. The main characters of both stories were indeed disappointed when their expectations did not come true. The boy in ”Araby” was indeed engulfed in the fantasy he created about this girl that when he realized this girl is all in his imagination he was left feeling lost and hopeless. In ”Salvation” the boy expectation of being saved by Jesus which his aunt created was short lived and this caused him to loose his faith in Jesus. This happened because he did not experience what he was told will happened, Jesus never came to save him and he did not feel what the others felt during the ceremony.
Serafina i too noticed how the main characters let their imaginations run wild causing them to be disappointed in the end. Whether it was self influenced or peer influenced both main characters found themselves being disappointment after trying to fulfill a specific goal. I love how you said how the main character from Araby was trying to gain a new sense of purpose by building this fantasy in his head about a girl he barely ever talked to and a bazaar he had never been too, I also believe tho that young Langston wasn’t much different from our main character in Araby he too was trying to find a sense of purpose in his life through being saved by god, once he doesn’t see anything and realizes he wouldn’t be saved and maybe everything he was led to believe was lie a huge wave of disappointment comes over young Langston. Both characters experience huge disappointment through out the story after their fantasies aren’t fulfilled.
Hey Serafina, I agree with your comment on how both of their expectations has left a very emotional story. I really think that your word of choice resembles with what the authors were trying to convey to the reader. Such as the expectation and delusions of the main character of “Araby”, leading to the lack of a euphoric feeling when reaching the bazaar. These choice of words really led up to a great connection with the cause of his epiphany and when he “became disappointed when they weren’t live up to.” You were also able to clearly capture the reason for the epiphany and what led up to it. This kids expectation for the Holy Spirit to make him stand up and see the light really caused him to realize “that his expectation were false”.
In ”Salvation” the epiphany that occurs is Langston realizing that Jesus is not real and it was a lie. Langston sat there waiting on Jesus to come save him but he never came, he could not feel what everyone else in the church was feeling. This boy faith was broken because as the story mentioned ”I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened.” Just to please the church and his aunt this little boy as with all the other kids had to pretend to be saved. So they decided that maybe to save further trouble, it’s better for them to lie, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved. In ”Araby” the narrator epiphany was that the girl he was obsessed with was all in his imagination and does not exist. As he mentioned ”Her image accompanied me ,I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. This girl he is obsessed with is the light in his life and when he realized she does not exist he is left feeling loss and angry.
Treshel, you’ve articulated very well what happens in the two epiphanies experienced by the protagonists in the stories. You are right that the boy in “Araby” has let his fantasy become the one source of light and hope in his life. We can understand his need to do this when we put ourselves into the bleak, isolated world in which he lives. Many of Joyce’s stories underscore a sense of paralysis and an inability to break free from the realities of Irish culture at the time, which include the suffocating dominance of the Catholic church and of the English government, as well as the widespread poverty and general hopelessness of the country.
Hey Treshel, I enjoyed reading your take on both stories and I completely agree with both perspectives but your take on Araby is the most eye-opening part, when you pointed out that “he realized she does not exist” that honestly blew my mind because I was only thinking of the story from his fantastical point of view but I didn’t really pay attention to the reality of what actually happened, but when I read that, it made perfect sense. This is the best explanation I’ve seen so far. Keep up the good work ?
Antonia, I’m not sure if I completely understand your response to Treshel. I believe Treshel meant that, while the girl in the story physically exists, the boy’s ideas about her and his “relationship” to her are fantasies. If I’m misinterpreting your comment, forgive me!
The coming- of age story Salvation the epiphany the narrator experiences is that they no longer believe in Jesus. The narrator realizes they lost faith in Jesus and the church. The narrator mentions that, ”I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me.” The narrator really tried to convince themselves that they believe in Jesus. In reality, the narrator wanted to satisfy his aunt. They tried to convince themselves in order to save any trouble in which it didn’t work out because their entire life was just them lying to themselves. In the story Araby the narrator comes to the realization of how obsessive he became and the loss of hope because he is so lost in reality that when he realizes the girl does not exist he loses hope in his life.
Hey Jasmin! I definitely agree with you when you say that the narrator just wanted to satisfy his aunt. He was under pressure because it was all eyes on him, he also mentioned that it was getting late so that also added to the fact that he didn’t want them to wait on him much longer. In the “Araby” storyI also agree with you when you say that the little boy lost hope in life. I also believe it wasn’t a love story.
Nicole, I’ve commented to a few others, it is not enough to just agree with another student. Your post should also include an original observation or something that helps to enlarge the conversation.
The epiphany that occurs in “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, is that the author believed that Jesus was not real. In the story, a group of kids were being saved and Jesus was supposed to reveal to them. The author was waiting for Jesus to appear, while everyone had already gone up to the platform. The crowd was waiting for him to go up and to be saved by Jesus. Jesus never revealed to him and so he went up and for him that was him lying because Jesus never appeared to him. And so then he went home and cried. Therefore, the author remembering that when he was younger he thought that Jesus was not real because revealed himself, is the epiphany. While in “Araby” by James Joyce, the epiphany that occurs in this story is that a young boy was in love and he had this illusion that he could have been with this girl. Now he went to the bizarre to just see her late at night. Since this is a not a love story, I feel like it’s more of remembering the embarrassment that occurred during that time.
Nicole, thanks for the good comments about “Salvation.” Because “Araby” is not a love story, the epiphany has nothing to do with embarrassment about the girl. In this very dark story, the young protagonist faces the loss of illusion, which has kept him able to cope with his dreary existence.
I agree with you Nicole about “Salvation” by Langston Hughes that the narrator himself haded a belief that his aunt told him that Jesus would save him, but after a long time the narrator felt disappointed in himself for not being saved by Jesus, but I don’t fully agree with you about “Araby” by James Joyce because this story isn’t a love story because the author only light was the girl in his life but when he didn’t see what he wanted he felt disgusted in himself. (Just trying to help out)
Many of us will experience, dreadful, wonderful, surprising epiphany’s throughout our life. “Salvation” by Langston Hughes and “Araby” by James Joyce are no exceptions. In the text “Salvation” the character Langston believes he’s gonna see Jesus but doesn’t. The story takes place in a church where all the young sinners come to be “saved” by Jesus and one by one they are saved. Langston has hope because it states “My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul. I believed her. I had heard a great many old people say the same thing and it seemed to me they ought to know. So I sat there calmly in the hot, crowded church, waiting for Jesus to come to me”. This demonstrates Langston is openly waiting for Jesus but is quickly losing faith when he sees everyone and the other boy Westley getting up out of desperation knowing he was lying and not saved by Jesus. To save time Langston gets up and everyone is happy for him getting saved but it is revealed later that night he was sobbing because he came to the revelation Jesus is not real for not “helping” him. In “Araby” the character becomes so obsessed of Mangan’s sister he starts blinding himself from reality. He makes himself a task to bring her something from the market. The journey to the market was furious from the delayed train to coming to an empty market. As he comes into the stores and doesn’t see anything of value in the dark hallway he realizes the girl isn’t real but it was his imagination and becomes inflamed after seeing himself with such excitement for his task he made.
Brian, you’ve got some good observations here about both stories. In this forum, however, you don’t need to retell the plot. I’m not sure what you mean when you write about “Araby” and say “the girl wasn’t real.” The girl is a real character in the story; she’s the older sister of the boy’s friend. It is the boy’s ideas about the girl that are unreal. He has created a fantasy of his own around an actual but unattainable girl.
In Salvation and Araby the narrators take an interesting approach to insert the epiphany of both stories. In Araby by James Joyce, the main character was deeply devoted to belive that his light was a girl in town when everything else around him seems to be grey and not interesting, he would be uninterested to play with friends or have trouble trying to focus on school because he saw her as a divine light of scape of the dark and grey void he felt inside him but this made him feel hopeless in the end because he couldn’t fulfill her desire and so once again he felt the dark void around him. The story Salvation by Matthew Sharpe was similar to Araby by James Joyce because in Salvation he was a young boy who was promised the divide interaction with god and he believed that it was possible because everyone around him seems so convinced that God had saved them and so he gets rid of the doubt and tries to embrace the light or the ‘divine” but feels sad and out of place when he realized he couldn’t reach it. In both stories, the light or divine is offered or desired by the young boys but they can’t fulfill or hold it.
Junior, first and very important, the author of “Salvation” is Langston Hughes. Aside from that, your comments are all well taken. I like what you write about both protagonists seeking a form of light in their life, which in the end, slips away from them. One other thing—be sure to use quotation marks around titles of stories.
In the essay, “Salvation”, the epiphany that occurs for young Langston is that Jesus isn’t real because he was sure that both him and Wesley had lied about Jesus coming to them, and yet they suffered no repercussions. But most importantly he no longer believed because Jesus did not come to save him in the way that his aunt had previously described that he would. In the short story “Araby”, the epiphany that occurs for the young boy is that his fantasy and his reality existed in two different realms of possibility and when they finally met, it crushed him. His only source of joy was something he had created in his head about someone who he felt was unattainable at this point, and he realized that all his efforts had been futile and insensible. But above all, he felt foolish to think that he could be worthy of happiness.
In Langston Hughes’s “Salvation”, he epiphany that Jesus was not real. In the story, Langston and a group of people sat on a bench waiting for Jesus to save them. They saw Jesus and stood up one after another. Only Langston was sitting on the bench. Langston waited for a long time, but Jesus still did not come to save him. Seeing a group of people praying to him, Langston felt stressed and ashamed. Then he realized that there is no Jesus in this world, so he stood up, he lied to everyone, making them believe that Jesus saved him. In James Joyce’s “Arabs”, the narrator epiphany that the girl he has always been obsessed with is just his fantasy and not true. In the story, the narrator regards the girl he imagined in his dark life as the driving force for him to live. He uses this girl to paralyze himself and remove himself from reality. But in the end, when he discovered that the girl was not real, he broke away from fantasy and returned to reality. At this time, he would feel more sadness and pain.
In both stories “Salvation” by Langston Hughs and “Araby” by James Joyce we can we can see a common theme of being coming of age stories but because it was a coming of age story both of the narrators at the end came to the realization that not everything ends up the way you think it will.
In “Salvation” the family of the narrator has built up this moment where he is supposed to feel this sense of being taken over and see the light and in that moment you will see and hear Jesus in your soul. The priest and his family had built up this moment so much that when in reality when it came to the moment he was supposed to feel all these things he didn’t, in the group all the kids except him had that moment where they were “Brought to Jesus” leaving him alone on the benches. He ended up lying just to please everyone in the church. But that night when he was alone in his bed crying he had the epiphany that because Jesus had never came to him in the church, he had lost his faith in Jesus making that his coming to reality that not everything will come to fruition no matter how much you and the people around you build it up.
In “Araby” The narrator had built up this love for Mangan’s sister trying to distract himself from the somewhat dull life he was living making it an escape. When she brought up the bazaar this immediately became a way for him escape his dull life, from that moment on he built up the bazaar as a magical place where he could escape to as well as find his crush a present. But when it came to the end the whole trip was a bust the train was empty and it was late to the station, and when he finally got to the bazaar it was mostly packed up and it had pretty much closed for the day. Finally at the end he had his epiphany, that moment of realization that this dream that he had built up as magical and romantic had been neither of those things the market was nothing but everything in his life dull and dreary.
Neil, thanks for the good comments, and welcome to the Db! Your explanation of the epiphanies in both stories is very well expressed. Both realizations are quite profound considering the young ages of the protagonists.
Hi Neil, I agree with you in “Salvation,” he lied to please everyone around him and cried alone in bed. He cried because he was desperate in reality rather than felt guilty about lying. It was the moment he learned that no matter how hard he tried, the results would not always come.
In “Araby,” he figured out a way to escape reality, but in the end, it is meaningless in reality. And I also agree with you the moment he realized that the dream he had realized was nothing but boring.
In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, we observe that in the beginning of the story, the protagonist confined himself between the fear of betraying his people who were praying for him to be saved and later in the guilt of committing the same fear of betrayal. He wanted to reassure his belief upon Jesus’s existence but when the boy next to him—Westley, confronted that he saw Jesus, Langston was anxious by the situational irony. He hadn’t seen Jesus yet and he knew that the boy lied and pretended. He knew that Westley was tired of sitting and waiting for Jesus to come save him. The coercion he was dealing with because of how his aunt, the minister, and the people in the church desperately prayed for him, how Westley told them he got saved including the rest of the boys, and how he was the only one left all alone. Seeing his aunt cry, perhaps made him think that she had already lost faith in him. However not to deceive anyone’s belief except for his own; he therefore lied, being quite impulsive. Nevertheless, the epiphany that occurred in this story was that—Langston believed, realized, and encountered a reality where he knew if he would have been honest, the society and his family would have condemned his existence and abandoned him for the rest of his life. And what could a 12-year-old Langston do to save his credence?
On the other hand, In “Araby” by James Joyce, the epiphany occurred upon reliance and faith but with a different circumstance. This story mainly focuses on how the character who is a young boy experiences epiphany with an unimagined reality—completely opposite to his convictions. He discovers this epiphany while dealing with a paradoxical attachment with the girl older than his age. Later, towards the end of the story he explores his self-restraint behavior towards things he believed. As we can observe how disoriented he seemed at the end because he did not think that the bazaar would have had almost empty stalls which was also not his expectation.
Prasika, thanks for the comments. I think the most profound realization in “Salvation” is not as much about societal acceptance, although that is a factor, as about the boy’s recognition that he does not believe in Jesus anymore. I’m a little unclear about your interpretation of “Araby.” I’m not sure what you feel is paradoxical or what you believe the epiphany to be.
In “Araby” the boy sees the trip to the bazaar and buying a gift for his crush as an escape from his own miseries. He tries and avoid the problems that have plagued his life and instead tries and distract himself. And I believe because of how committed he was to find an escape and live a life different from his current one, he had become very self-restrained with his thoughts and that is why he seemed very disappointed towards his Dad and therefore, even though it was already too late for him to go to the bazaar, he still went. This led him to inculcate strong faith upon himself and wasn’t aware about the circumstance he would face at the bazaar. But when he does get there, his idea of the escape is shattered, through which he later on has an epiphany.
Prasika, thank you for very much for taking the time to post this follow-up. Your added comments here clarify a bit of the uncertainty I had about your initial post. Just be aware that the boy in “Araby” does not have a father. This is part of the bleakness of his life and part of the reason he has a need to create a fantasy. He lives with an uncle and aunt, who seem a bit detached from his emotional life.
The epiphany that happens in “Salvation” is that the main character realizes he never saw Jesus like he thought he would, was never saved, and no longer believed in him. In church, he believed that in order to be saved, Jesus would come to him in a way where he would be able to visually see him. He sat on the bench waiting for Jesus while all the other children around him got up and became saved according to him and his perspective. Once he became the last child on the bench, he felt like he was letting his aunt down because he was taking so long,and he felt like he was holding up the church service. He decided to lie, he got up off the bench without seeing Jesus like he thought he was supposed to, and pretended like everything happened like it was supposed to. That same night, he was crying in his room, his aunt thought he was crying because he was saved that day, but truly he was crying because Jesus never came to help him and he no longer believed in him because of it.
I believe his epiphany was the realization of his innocence going to naught. It suddenly dawned upon him that he was driven by lust or love but he needs economic value to experience them.He realized that in order to fully pursue his passions and desires he needs his own independence. To fulfill his dreams/fantasy he needed the financial support of his uncle I believe at the end he recognized himself as a “creature driven by vanity” his identity was becoming one who placed value on lustful feelings that can only be truly complimented with fiery lust, a sense of independence and economic power.
Jah-Mya, your comments about “Salvation” are well taken; however, I hope you will revisit “Araby” and maybe review the short lecture on the Week 3 page. I don’t think we can say the boy is lustful. In fact, his impressions of the girl seem informed by religious and spiritual ideas. She is described as being angelic, always surrounded by light. Light, in fact, is what she seems to represent to this boy, who lives in a very dark world.
The epiphany that occurs in the “Salvation” is that Hughes, attending a church revival, expects to see Jesus, but suddenly realizes that Jesus will not come to save him and thereby loses his faith in God. In “Salvation”, the narrator feels hopeless and disappointed because he believes everything his aunt says and believes that something will happen, but when he realizes that God will not come save him, he eventually gives up and as a result lies to the congregation. For the narrator, this was the moment when he came to realization and insight that changed his perception. The epiphany that occurs in “Araby” is when the boy narrator realizes that he has deceived himself into thinking that his life will be better through Mangan’s sister and Araby. In “Araby”, after arriving at the bazaar, the narrator realizes that his hopes have not been fulfilled and that in his imagination he has invented something that does not really exist.
Altynai, thanks for the good comments. Your express quite well how “Salvation” explores the loss of faith, which is a quite profound loss. As with a few others in the group, I’m not 100 percent sure I understand your comments about “Araby” when you write that he has invented something that does not really exist. I think you mean that his idealized image of the girl does not exist, but I’m not completely sure.
Hi Prof. Conway! When I wrote that the narrator has invented something that does not really exist, I meant that in his thoughts he turned the bazaar into some kind of beautiful place, just like he turned Mangan’s sister into an object of admiration. He believed that his life would be better through his sister and Araby, but then he realized that he was deceiving himself and his hopes were not justified.
Altynai, thank you so much for this clarification. I had a sense that you had this full understanding, but I wasn’t completely sure. Your follow-up confirms your meaning.
Hi Altynai, I agree with you. I do think that young Langston lied because he did not want to disappoint his aunt, but also because he was the last child to be left on the bench. In Araby, the boy was so infatuated with the vision he created that he could not separate reality from nonreality. He realizes that reality does not correspond with he wished for. Both stories are one of those things you have to learn and understand from experience.
Hey Altynai, I agree with your take on the narrators in both “Salvation” and “Araby” on both of them losing something that should really play a big role in ones life because of building up expectations and then when they don’t reach that level they’ve built up in their heads they totally break and lose it. In the case for “Salvation” it was his faith and in “Araby” the dream of a new reality.
In “Salvation” the author realizes Jesus is not real for him. The beginning of the story builds his expectations for finding Jesus and becoming saved, while in the end he realizes that Jesus will not appear to him, which results in him losing his faith. In “Araby” the author goes through a similar epiphany, but instead of losing his faith in God he realizes that he has been obsessing over a girl. Not just obsessing, but creating an entirely new image of her separate from who she actually was. He realizes that he never fell in love with her, but with his own mental creation and overblown expectations. Both stories result in the narrator losing what gives their lives meaning. In “Salvation” the narrator had lost his religion and his hope for being saved. In “Araby” the narrator lost not only his hopes for impressing the girl, but the mental image of her that had given him hope in such a bleak setting.
Josh, thanks for the excellent comments. I think you have explained very well what happens in both stories and why the epiphanies are so profound and life-changing. Your last line is especially effective in putting forth the theme in “Araby.”
Hi Josh! I completely agree that both narrators have lost what gave their lives meaning. In “Salvation”, his expectations did not meet the reality. Losing his faith in God made him feel shameful and doesn’t know how to be. In “Araby”, Joyce definitely created a different image of what the girl actually was. His image of her represented hope. Hope was the main thing he’s been wanting, only to realize he can’t find it in a person.
“Salvation” is a brief personal story of the struggle to reconcile adult ideas with a child’s mind in Langston Hughes’s youth. Explaining the afternoon he spends in a church hoping for the physical light and epiphany to introduce Jesus to him, the short story reveals that Hughes lied about being saved to please his aunt and then wept at his hypocrisy. He criticizes his aunt and the church, choosing to focus on the lack of communication and misunderstandings that developed from the generational divide. As a kid, while it did because of the stress put on him by adults around him, he was guilty and ashamed of manipulating his family. His conversation with Westley demonstrates how children have capitulated to adults out of comfort; Westley isn’t saved besides Hughes, he chooses to please the pastor and his family to avoid conflict. His aunt reveals to his uncle he is crying because he has been saved, mistaking Hughes’s emotions. In “Araby” written by James Joyce, the epiphany by the narrator isn’t good when he doesn’t reconfirm his love to Mangan’s sister or realize that the money he was spending on gifts wasn’t worth it as he managed to win her attention. He gave up on the concept of love instead.
Gabriela, I’m not clear on what you feel the epiphany in “Salvation” is. You’ve given a good recap of the plot, but
what is the profound realization of the boy at the end of the story? As for “Araby,” I hope you will revisit this story, along with the short pre-reading lecture on the week 3 page. As I continue to emphasize, “Araby” is not a love story. Whether or not the boy gets a gift for the girl will not change the outcome and the bitter realization the protagonist confronts at the end of the story.
In my opinion, the epiphany that occurs in “Salvation” is when Lagston felt disappointed after not getting to see Jesus like he expected. In addition, for him the worse part was feeling ashamed for losing his faith and lying to his aunt and the whole congregation. Most children tent to take every word that adults tell them very literally, so it is not surprising that Lagston really believed that he would see Jesus as prove of being saved. This is probably why some people base on their believes prefer to let their children decide what they want to believe until the kids grow up, and not tell them what they should believe when the children still young. On the other hand, in “Araby” James is obsessed with a girl that he doesn’t even know the name, only that she is related to one of his friends. However, he tried to impress this girl by buying something to her, but at the end he wasn’t able to do so, and he felt disappointed for losing the hope of making real all the things that he imagined with her.
Kenia, thanks for your comments. Isn’t the most profound realization of the boy in “Salvation” the loss of his faith, even more than his shame and lying? We might say that “Salvation” is about a loss of faith, while “Araby” is about a loss of hope. I also pose this question: if the boy had been able to buy a gift for the girl in “Araby,” would this have changed anything? Would his friend’s older sister suddenly give the young boy the time of day?
Yes Professor Conway, I think that losing his faith was devastating for the boy in “Salvation”. Now, about your question if the boy had been able to buy a gift for the girl in “Araby,” would have changed anything?, I think that since the story talks about the boy romance illusion with his friend’s sister, buying a gift to the girl was his only plan on getting to know her more. Before the girl ask him about if he will go to the bazaar, he mentions that he “thought little about the future” and that he wasn’t sure if he will ever speak to her and tell her about his feelings, so in my opinion, he probably conclude that buying a gift was the best opportunity.
Kenia, thanks for the follow-up. I agree with you that the boy thinks buying the gift is a good idea. But would it have mattered to the girl? Would it have led to a real “relationship?”
The narrators of both “Salvation” by Langston Huges and “Araby” by James Joyce, have an illuminating realization as a result of their painful childhood. It is clear that both narrators struggle with finding the thing in life to help keep them going. In “Salvation”, Hughes has a loss of faith after the ritual. Before it started he was very optimistic for a new beginning. He soon realized that he couldn’t be embraced by Jesus because he didn’t believe in him. As much as he wanted to like everyone else he couldn’t. He was ashamed of himself and felt that he could never be saved. The story “Araby” was a little bit similar in terms of what the narrator lost. Joyce started to create this image of a girl in his head and became obsessed with it. It wasn’t the image of her beauty he was obsessed with but the feeling she gave him. Everything else in his life was dark and this girl brought the light into it. He had an epiphany of not having enough hope and giving up. The girl was a form of hope for him and that made him want to latch onto her as much as he could. After trying to impress her, his only source of hope was fading.
In the stories “Salvation” by Langston Hughes and “Araby” both characters experience an epiphany at a young age. For example in the short story Salvation, young Langston is excited to be saved by Jesus along with the other kids in the church, during the time period the story takes place in it was a custom that every man, women, and child is saved by Jesus in the village. When the day finally came for Langston to be saved he just sat there for hours waiting and waiting to see something, to be saved, but nothing happened. Young Langston has his epiphany when the only other kid sitting on the bench with him doesn’t see anything just like Langston but gets up anyway onto the stage like he has been saved, at that moment Langston realizes that everything he was led to believe seems to have been a lie. In the short story Araby the main character is almost obsessed with the fantasy he has created in his head of the young women and the bazaar. Throughout the story the main character is obsessively driven to get to the bazaar to fulfill the fantasy he created of this young women he had barely known. When finally arriving at the bazaar the main character is awfully disappointed by the actual experience and loses hope while browsing for this “perfect gift” for this girl that he didn’t even really know. His epiphany was realizing that the fantasy he had built of the bazaar and this young women was just that, A fantasy which he had created.
Hey Reuben,
Your thoughts the epiphany of the young boy in “Araby” are really great. I thought similar that the boy comes to the conclusion that life might not be what he makes it up as. As someone mentions in another comment above, the narrators use these stories to show when they had a great shift in their own perceptions of their lives.
I think the two short stories “Salvation” by Langston Hughes and “Araby” by James Joyce both experience epiphany, but they have different perceptions. In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, when he was 13, he experienced desire, hope, pressure from others, and despair. Adults and other children participating in the ritual were saved by Christ, but he felt unsaved. So, he felt pain in his situation and adjusted to his surroundings, then he lied. He does not believe in Jesus like the people around him and is desperate to find that his epiphany is not what he wanted.
On the other hand, “Araby” by James Joyce was trying to escape from a dull reality. So he created illusions in his head and escaped from reality, but after all, he understood that the illusions he created could not change a life that was meaningless and boring to reality. No matter how much he draws an illusion, it never happens.
Hey Rii, I completely agree with your idea for “Salvation”. In salvation, the pressure from others definitely played a huge role in his belief! People told him to anticipate a feeling and image that wouldn’t have came to him literally in a physical form. I think belief has to be felt from within yourself but people around him made is seem as though it would have came literally.
HI RII I definitely agree with you in saying he no longer believes in god considering all the stories about the lord and assuming that he would be able to physically see the lord can definitely lead to such disappointment that he no longer believes in him anymore. However after he speaks to his uncle i think he is going to continue to believe in god but also lowering his expectations when it comes to church and believing what he is being told, but being young and curious he will have a lot of question probably starting with why he was led to believe the lord was physically seen by so many people except him.
Hi Rii, I love your take on both stories and I completely agree with what you mentioned. In “Salvation”, I could definitely feel his pain because despite of not believing in Jesus like everyone else he had to lie so that he would not hurt them and if he did not then just imagine how his life would have turned out to be. Would he still be a part of his family or would they disown him? Would society accept his beliefs or shun him? I am pretty sure that all these thoughts came to his head and that is why he decided to just lie and adjust to his surroundings just like his friend Westley did.
“Araby” was a little difficult for me to understand to be honest but I feel like you got the message out of it clearly because his life did seem pretty boring and basic at first until he saw the girl and after he saw her, her picture was the only thing that filled his thoughts so much so that he envisioned a whole new perspective on everything around him, like with the Araby market, he thought it was going to be some magical place where he would find the most perfect gift that would truly win him a spot in the heart of the girl but instead he finds another gift. The gift of reality. And this is the gift that forces him to wake up from the world of illusion he is in and face the fact of life, that there are more important things in the world than just love and love is something that is not guaranteed no matter what you do to achieve or win it.
The epiphany that occurs in the story “Salvation” is not believing that Jesus really exists. Taken place in a church, Mr. Langston’s younger self speaks on a time when he was a lost lamb stuck in the cold that needed to be saved along with other children. He was told by his aunt that he would be able to see a light, something will happen to you and you will see, hear, and feel Jesus in your soul. Once all of this happens you have been saved. When you hear stories, especially from adults, with similar feelings and events you will start to believe. Which in fact Langston did. When it was time for the young lambs to come into the light and be saved, some of the children had gotten up because they “saw” Jesus. Langston and others sat on the bench. The people in the church started to pray for them and sung a song about saving some poor sinner. A kid name Westley and Langston were the last ones on the bench, Westley got tired of sitting so he went up and he was saved. Langston believed that Westley did not in fact see Jesus. At this point Langston is still waiting for Jesus and is still confused on why Jesus has not come to him. He grows tired and just gets up. Later, he feels ashamed because he lied to everyone including his aunt. However, in Arby, the young boy escapes the reality of his life and dreams of romance, mystery, and beauty he longs for in life. I would like to say it is a love story but its more of a fantasy and obsession. All he can think about is his friend’s sister and was so adamant on buying her a gift, once he got to the market, he did not get anything. I believe both boys were full of hope and excitement but were crushed and disappointed.
Heaven, your comments on “Salvation” are well taken. I disagree with you, however, when you characterize “Araby” as a love story. Even if the boy had been able to purchase a gift at the bazaar, would it have mattered? Would his friend’s older sister have cared? Would it have moved them to have an actual relationship?
Hi Heaven
I thought the same thing in ” Arby”. He even goes as far as imagining himself holding a cup of wine and looking down at all of his enemies with such confidence. He fantasized that this purchase of a gift would in turn make him in a relationship and a man. In my opinion, I don’t think that this is a love story at all rather it is more of a fantasy of all the things that can be envisioned when we think we are in love, more like what you said after. This story truly represents the extreme and fixation one can have when having a crush and fantasy. We can imagine all these amazing things that can be bestowed upon us when we fixate on anything; then in turn get hurt because our vision was hit with reality.
Heaven, I can definitely see your perspective on “Salvation” I think it could get to a point where he could question whether any of them even “saw” Jesus. Everything you’ve been taught goes away and you’re forced to think for yourself sometimes. In the end I think he just realized it was all a lie and the other kid helped him realize that.
In “Salvation” the author Langston had been told many things about what to expect when he was saved by people he loved and looked up to. Langston accepted these events would happen in a literal way. He totally expected to actually see a light with his eyes, see Jesus come to him, feel something actually happen in his insides. When none of these things happened at the church service, Langston was ashamed. Ashamed that he had held up the service,
that he was called out by name to be prayed for, that he had let down the elders and his dear auntie. Ashamed that he ultimately gave in and made it seem that he did get saved, making him feel like a liar and deceiver. He felt that something surely must be wrong with him if everyone else could really be saved and not him. I can imagine as an impressionable young teenager Langston felt other things too, like confusing and fear of being left out. All of this results in his epiphany when that night after service, with a deep sorrow, that brought him to tears, he accepted that he no longer believed in Jesus, because Jesus did not come and get him.
In “Araby” the young boy narrator lives in a world full of darkness. This is implied from the very first chapter in which he describes the street he lives on as “blind”, and the home as unattached, whereas the other houses on the block had, “decent lives in them.” The lack of light in the descriptions related to his home and surroundings throughout the story. Although the age of the boy is not actual stated, it is implied through his action of playing in the yard with other kids and rolling around on the floor trying to get a glimps of his friends sister Mangan. Although through most of the story, the boy has no direct contact with Mangan, he sees her as something beautiful, something full light that seems to follow her very presence. The young boy wants this light in his life. Being impressionable at his age, the boy associates the light he yearns for with Mangan’s physical characteristics and presence, resulting in an obsession with her. The boy goes through obstacles to get to the bazaar and experiences an epiphany when this wonderful place of wonder and light, which he manifested as Mangan, did not really exist. He found himself in a dark place where he falls short of his purchase of the gift. Perhaps he felt that by giving her a gift from a place she wanted to be, he would receive the gift of light the she had manifested for him, which is where he wanted to be.
In the end he is no longer blind like when the story begins, this epiphany leaves him feeling foolish and vain which brings him anguish and anger.
Janine, thank you for the thorough and insightful comments. I like your exploration of the word “blind” here as well as your emphasis on the imagery of light and dark that pervades the story and clues readers into the boy’s state of mind.
Hi Janine, I like your summary about “Salvation”, and I also agree with your comment about how devastating was for Langston accepting that he lost his faith, because Jesus didn’t come like he was told. Likewise, I like your thoughts in “Araby” generally speaking. However, I think that Mangan is not the name of the girl. Her name wasn’t actually ever mention on the story. For my understanding, Mangan is the name of the girl’s brother, in other word James’ friend.
Janine, I agree with how you describe the feelings of shame for Hughes. There is a true epiphany when he realizes Jesus isn’t coming. I wonder if he also feels shame in his realization. Shame in the fact that he doesn’t believe, and must lie about it. I think the idea of shame is used well here to encompass all his actions.
The epiphany that occurs in “Salvation” is the narrator had expectations that were to large of a demand to follow. When he lost faith in god he felt ashamed and was not in his right of mind. In “Araby” the narrator was on a journey to find hope but comes to the point where he believes no one has it. He tries to make a different view of the girl from his past but cannot find a similar person in reality but just his allusion of a “perfect girl”.
Alexsander, please be sure to review “Information about Discussion Boards” in COURSE INFORMATION for length requirements for posts in the Db. I want you to get full credit!
In the coming of age stories “Arby” by James Joyce and “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, both of the main characters reach an epiphany that would change their perspectives on a certain aspect of their lives. In “Arby” the main character realizes towards the end that buying a gift for a girl, which he is desperately in love with but cant finds the words to tell her, will not make his fantasies of him being a grown adult and facing life fearlessly and her falling beyond in love with him will come true. He envisioned himself being so proud when he would walk into the store, buy the gift, and imagined himself almost praised by the people in the store. When one of the clerks asked if he needed any assistance, begrudged almost, he realized that it was arrogant to correlate buying her a gift to his fantasies. In “Salvation” the main character was having an inner struggle with himself. He told the people and his aunt that he could see god, but later that night he realized that he doesn’t believe in Jesus because he didn’t see him the way his family members did.
Megan, “Araby,” (not “Arby”) is not a love story. I’ve said this to numerous others, urging them to revisit the story, as I do with you now. This is a story about something more profound than the usual boy-loses-girl story.
Megan, I also agree with the story not being a love story. From how I see it , it shows a lesson that is actually really valuable. He meets someone and believes he does love her. But how could he be if he never got to know her, really talk to her etc. I think that’s common in real life and is what the story is trying to portray. He finally realized it was only just infatuation and he wasn’t really in love with the girl. But where he got this from was the Araby where it wasn’t what he expected it to be.
In the story “Salvation” he desperately waited to see Jesus as he believed he would. Seeing what the other kid did he did the same and decided to lie to not delay anymore time. He was upset and broken with self guilt knowing he lied to the church about seeing Jesus while his aunt praised him thinking those tears were out of joy of seeing Jesus. In Arabay this kid who’s fond of a girl, was willing to do whatever for her, he had an almost weird obsession over her that he couldn’t explain. She wanted to go to the Arabs but couldn’t so he decided to go himself and get her something. But when he got there everything was empty, and when the woman asked if he wanted to buy something, he said no. He was then left there in anger and disappointment. I think both stories show how someone’s ideals just change when something occurs.They both wanted something yet reached a realization when they sought it.
Manuel, I’m not clear from your post how you identify the epiphanies experienced by the boys in the two stories. You write that “they both wanted something yet reached a realization when they sought it.” What was that realization in each case?
So for the story “Salvation” the main character realized Jesus was not going to come and save him, and that all those stories and preaching he’s been taught were all but a lie to him. He went from wanting to see Jesus physically badly to just growing up in a sense and thinking for himself. That’s the epiphany. As for “Araby”, all he did for the girl was for nothing, as he realized he was never really in love with the girl, it was infatuation. He couldn’t possibly get to love a girl he barely knew anything about. And it came to his head at the Araby when he ended up not buying anything for her.
I also want to add seeing the Araby for what it was is what sparked that realization. It wasn’t what he believed it to be. He imagined a beautiful place full of people and great business but got nothing but money hungry people who never really cared for the next customer. I think from there is when he realized why did he ever do all this for the girl in the first place. Did he even love her to be doing all this ? I think that moment is where he came to realize this.
The epiphany that occurs in “Araby” is, the boy realizes that everything he did and put him self out for was all for nothing. In this story by James Joyce, the boy becomes infatuated with a girl character. She is symbolized as the light of his life, any where she appears, there’s always a light hitting her silhouette. They discuss the bazaar and how she couldn’t go so he tells her he’ll go and bring her something back, probably as a con to win her over. By the end of the story, the boy becomes defeated. The place is dead and realizes his efforts were for nothing and walks into the dark of the bazaar angry at himself, he had fallen in love with his own creation. The epiphany that occurs in “Salvation” is when a young Langston Hughes starts to believe there isn’t a Jesus because he didn’t come to help him. This happens because his aunt is excited for him to be saved and says that he will feel when Jesus appears to him, young Hughes takes this literally and is one of the last children to get up to be saved as he was waiting for this feeling and appearance his aunt told him about. At the end, while his aunt believes he’s crying because he’s felt the holy ghost, he’s crying because he has lost his belief in a Jesus.
The epiphany in “Salvation” by Langston Hughes is that after all the stories from his aunt and the other elder people about their experience with God, he was sure he’d see him as well. He was nervous but excited to get saved and see Jesus. He had already heard of his aunt and elders’ experience in seeing a “bright light”. But as he sat on the bench and time went by and seeing kids little at a time go before him and nothing seemed to be happening to him, he started getting anxious. And when more kids went up he probably started to wonder “well maybe it isn’t going to happen”. I think as time went by he started to get disappointed. I think he really wanted to have that experience in seeing Jesus. And when he spoke to his friend and his friend was going to “get it over with”, He started to disbelief. And he did just as his friend did but he didn’t feel right n doing it. In “Araby” the narrator is obsessed with a girl next door who doesn’t see him in the way he sees her. He takes the chance to offer to buy her something at a store, hoping it would make her his. But as he’s walking around the store, he comes to realize that even if he does get her this gift, she won’t return the affection he has for her.
Khadijah, I appreciate your comment that it would not matter whether or not the boy purchased a gift for the girl. But I’d like to hear more about why this is true. What does this boy mean to the girl? More importantly, what does this girl mean to the boy? Is what he feels “affection” or something else altogether? Is this a real relationship? What does this girl represent to him? Why is she so important in his life?
In both stories “Araby” and “salvation” both narrators have been in a life situation that led them to hurt themselves without knowing. In the story “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, the narrator was faced with the realization that Jesus will not be coming to save him because he was not real and this resulted in him losing faith in Jesus because he has the faith in Jesus by his aunt telling him that he will be saved all the time, but when he needed Jesus he wasn’t there and that made him have less faith in Jesus, after what happened to him. In “Araby” by James Joyce, the narrator was disappointed because he realized how caught up he was in his false sense of reality when it came to having high expectations of himself. Once he didn’t meet those expectations he felt disgusted with himself, about the girl that was his only light in his life.
The epiphany in Salvation due to a painful childhood is that it’s seems unwise to fight over a belief system.This story really speaks to me as it addresses issues that are still going on which are arguing and fighting over religious beliefs whether they are different from one another or some of that have no beliefs.This story points out that there should not be such religious discrimination as it seems as a way to impose our wills on people by disrespecting or disregarding other peoples beliefs or saying your beliefs are more true or realistic.In retrospect who are your to try and force your beliefs on others as I say to each their own as everyone person is not suppose to all follow the same thing as we as people are designed to follow our own path not be bullied or persuaded as some followers like to put it into strong arming people into other religions followings.
Hey Michael, this is very different take I’ve seen on Salvation compared to everyone else’s, that’s what I like about it. Your take is honest, and brutally so filled with what you saw from the story and connect with modern life. Maybe if Langston wasn’t pressured in the moment by his Aunt asking him why doesn’t he wish to be saved, or his friend who got tired of sitting around waiting for something he felt wasn’t going to happen, maybe Langston could’ve been honest or even asked what was supposed to happen then and there. Or maybe if people were open to hearing something that didn’t necessary match up with what they wanted to hear, Langston could’ve been real and kept it so with everyone
In both short stories, “Salvation” by Langston Hughes and “Araby” by James Joyce the narrator is looking back on childhood memories, painful ones even, and comes to an epiphany/realization. There realizations are similar and different when certain aspects are concerned and paid attention to. In Salvation, it starts off with Langston in somewhat excitement, but more so curiosity to being saved by Jesus. He develops expectations of the moment based on what he is told what would happen and what he would see by other people. During the prayers and such, he’s looking for this moment and becomes somewhat angry that it wont happen, eventually Langston caves into peer pressure and pretends that he has experienced the “moment”. During and following this experience, Langston realizes that Jesus isn’t going to save him and he isn’t going to see the white light promised by many. I assume after this his faith is either weak or becomes practically nonexistent. In the Araby story, a different sort of epiphany comes into play, but both has to do with a sort of inner conflict and projection of that. In Araby, James starts off living a mundane and dull kind of life until he meets Mangan’s sister. Following their meeting he becomes infatuated with her, having a sort of secret crush on her and always being excited to hear her name. James ends up going to the market on a special day, late at night just for the opportunity to buy her a gift. James epiphany during this moment was that his “love”, as he called it, for Mangan’s sister wasn’t really a love but more of an unhealthy desire as he felt frustrated and angry once he knew he would return empty handed. This gift James was trying to get wasn’t one requested by Mangan’s sister but rather a task he took upon himself to “prove” himself to her. What he was doing wasn’t for the right reasons, although was with decent intent.
Hello Kadeem,
I agree with what you said as well. That the gift he took upon himself to buy would not “prove” himself to her. I believe he realized that even had he gotten her the gift, his affections would not be reciprocated. In “Salvation, I do believe Langston’s faith may have been tested and that as time went by, he started to lose it and feel like he may not see Jesus. And after seeing his friend wasn’t going to take it seriously,he thought he shouldn’t either.
Thanks for the good comments, Kadeem. I do have to mention, however, that it’s important not to confuse the author with the narrator. James Joyce is the author of the story. He has created a nameless narrator to tell it. Also, if you are discussing an author, please use his or her last name. (This comment is not just for you, but your post offers an opportunity to clarify this). “Salvation” is actually a chapter from a memoir, so in this case, the author and narrator are the same. Next week’s reading will feature a most unusual narrative point of view.
The epiphany is shown in these two stories since both narrators manifest it at an earlier age, although in both cases it is shown in a different way. In ¨Salvation¨ the young man begins by showing an emotion because of the ritual that he is going to experience and in the same way is full of faith and expectations because of the comments that adults make about the experience of embracing Jesus in his of age (13 years) to perform this ritual. After this he was overwhelmed when he realized that his reality was different from that of other people and in this way he reached the Epiphany that his faith in Jesus was not as much as he believed and that the religion is false.
In another way in “Araby” by James Joyce, the narrator falls in love with a woman with whom he only interacts, his plans were affected in this way his epiphany at the end was that he realized that love was infatuation and that He would return empty-handed when he did not find the gift he wanted to give to show his love. Thus she realized that he valued a gift that he could not get instead of giving value to the love he felt for her.
Daniela, thank you for posting. As I keep saying here, “Araby” is not a love story. I hope you will re-read the story for a deeper understanding of what the girl represents to the young boy. Note that she is not a woman, and he is not actually in love with her. It would not have mattered if, in fact, the boy had been able to get her gift. This is not what causes the protagonist’s anguish at the end of the story.
In the short story Salvation by Langston Hughes the narrator is experiencing Epiphany by realizing that everything his parents have told him everything he grew up believing was a lie. This is hard for him to handle because he was very invested in achieving this milestone, he wanted nothing more than to experience the joy everyone claimed to have experienced and he is clearly heartbroken after realizing that it won’t be happening to him. In the story Araby the narrator also deals with the loss of a preconceived thought or expectation being completely wrong. Before the narrator goes to the bazaar he’s filled with joy and expectations that he later realizes is incorrect. He wanted to visit the bazaar in hopes of happiness and love only to realize it’s the complete opposite.
Nefertaria, I appreciate your posting. However, I hope you will these two stories for a deeper understanding of the nature of the epiphanies experienced by the protagonist. As I’ve written a number of times in this forum, “Araby” is not a love story. To read it as such is to miss its depth. Similarly, in “Salvation,” something quite profound happens to the boy in this story, which you don’t quite explain in this post.
Both “Salvation” and “Araby” are stories that show the pain the narrators suffered as children and experience painful truths when their hopes are dashed. In “Salvation” a young boy is encouraged to attend a night at the church his aunt had building up for weeks. She says its a night where Jesus comes to sinners to save them and accept him into his arms. The boy attends the evening and waits and waits for anything sign that Jesus will show himself to him and fill him with light. Jesus never shows and the boy reluctantly goes to the alter. He is saved but he cries because he knows that he wasn’t saved and knows now that Jesus isn’t real. He’s hurt because he wanted to be saved from the “evil” withing him but realized there is no one to save him. Likewise, in “Araby”, a small boy is madly in love with a girl and wants to go to the market to buy her a gift to win her affection. On the night he plans to go his father is late and comes home drunk. His father gives him money for the market and he dashes out. Once he has gotten to the market he sees that most of the shops are closed and the lights are dim. The meanders around and realizes he wont be able to get anything for the girl he loves. The story ends with the boy empty-handed and angry. His realization is that sometimes things don’t work out. It seems like such a minute epiphany to an adult but as some point everyone needs to have that crystalizing moment. The moment where nothing works out the way it all did in your head. This is that moment for the boy in our story.
Elif, thanks for posting. I do hope, however, that you will revisit “Araby” and the short pre-reading lecture on the Week 3 page. It is not just about that realization that “things don’t work out.” The story is about a much more profound realization, and I urge you to read it again after answering the questions posed in the pre-reading lecture.
Professor Conway, after revisiting the story and looking through your questions it seems like the profound realization is how full of hopelessness the world is. The end of the story is more of a loss of innocence or hope, i felt, than my ideas from my previous comment. When he fails to find a gift for the girl he “loves” (it seems more like infatuation than love, but those are almost indistinguishable from each other to a child) in the story, he feels anger because the market, that he has built up to be the one beacon of hope in his dim world, is tarnished and dirty just like everything else.
In Langston Hughes’s “Salvation”. The narrator wants to see Jesus at church, but he waits a long time and doesn’t see Jesus, and he doesn’t want to delay the others and disappoint his aunt, so he lies. And he doesn’t see Jesus in the end, and he doesn’t get any redemption. At the end of the story, he finally understands that there is no God in the world, and there is no salvation. Christianity is also a false religion. This caused him to lose faith later on.
In James Joyce’s “Arbay”. From the very beginning, the narrator imagines Araby as a bazaar with Oriental mystical color, a place full of good visions for his fantasy, because he can bring a gift for the girl he likes. But when he finally came to Araby, he finally had an Epiphany and realized that Araby was just a profit-oriented secular market. At that moment, he felt how different he was from the girl he liked, and realized that his fantasy of the bazaar was a disillusionment.
Hey Zhang, I enjoyed how you took Joyce’s words of fantasy as almost literal. In that story he was a kid so it would be hard for him not to trust others words so when Araby is described as magical and enchanted he must have really believed it. Then he comes to find out it’s just a regular old market he is shattered as this was the place that the girl, the light, wanted to go to. He finds out there is no light and no enchanted magical place.
Hongbin, I like where you said ‘there is no salvation’ because I feel that it is relevant to both stories. In a way the stories are very similar in that both of the main characters are let down when the godly figure they were imagining in their head disappoints them. They are both let down and so they are then both born into this harsh reality where there is no salvation. No hope for people like them. They are left feeling empty since they no longer have that godly figure to give them that glimmer of hope in their lives.
The author of Both Salvation by Langston Hughes and Araby by James Joyce, have their realization of painful childhood. In salvation, a young Langston Hughes tells his own life about search Jesus. In the church, during the prayer Hughes said “he is saved”, but it was his misunderstanding. In reality he was not saved. He made a false claim in-front of a group of people regularly attend in the church that he saw Jesus and receives the holy spirit. Hughes become upset after the incident that he lied to his aunt and the event made him disappointed in himself. On the other hand, Araby is also similar in the narration. The article tells that the narrator living in a bad environment with heavy religious impact.The symbol of blindness serves to signal the narrator’s ignorance that comes with his infatuation with the girl, and the color brown is used to emphasize the dullness of everyday. The girl become narrator’s mental escape from everyday life. The girl became a light in his dark life.At the end narrator realized that his fillings is not love.
In the story ”Salvation” a young Langston Hughes has an epiphany about his faith. He is at church where he will be “saved” along with other children. Beforehand his aunt told him he will see Jesus and he will feel something when he does. Expecting this when it was time for the children to get up and be saved he awaited this feeling. He and his other friend were the last two kids sitting down waiting to see Jesus. His friend told him he was tired of waiting and just got up. All this is happening while a crowd of adults are praying and shouting for him to be saved. He eventually gives in and gathers with the other children as the adults shout louder. Later that night Hughes is brought to tears as he knows he didn’t see anything, he didn’t feel anything, and he lied to everyone at his church. Now Hughes believes god isn’t real as he didnt come to help him at his time of need.
In a similar story to “Salvation”, “Araby” is also a story of the author’s epiphany about his own life. In this story the author describes his place of living as dark, very gloomy, and no light. However, when he sees this girl there is finally a light that he sees and he becomes obsessed over it. He finds out that the light wants something from the market that is opened that night. He obsessed over this task ignoring everything that happens that day trying to skip everything. When his uncle showed up late he decided to go by himself being that it was already late. Once he gets to it, it’s too late the market is closing and as the last few lights turn off he realizes that he can’t reach the light, and no matter how hard he would try to find happiness the darkness will always take over.
I feel that a loss of innocence is the strongest theme tied to both epiphanies in “Araby” and “Salvation”. Joyce begins “Araby” with a boyish innocence and delusion tied to the idea he has of the young woman. He loses his innocence when he realizes the bazaar doesn’t live up to his dreams, and leaves dejected, understanding things in life aren’t always what you build them up to be. Hughes on the other hand, uses his experience in church. In what seems to start as an innocent lie, Hughes ultimately loses faith and feels guilt from this lie. Both authors can be seen struggling with the fantasies and ideas a young boy can conjure in their head. From this, Hughes and Joyce can be seen losing their innocence as those ideas and fantasies do not become reality.
Hey Anthony,
I agree. Both stories depict how the imaginative view that young children have eventually matures into the child questioning and reasoning more behind these thoughts. Langston had originally thought Jesus Christ would come to him in a literal way, it seemed like he looked forward to this occasion because it was exaggerated to him that it was going to be amazing… When his expectation was let down, Langston was left to wonder why? Why did other people see Jesus and he didn’t? He even realized the boy next to him was surely lying about having had seen Jesus simply because he was impatient, and Langston was confused by this and what was all the meaning of it about? He felt miserable with guilt and loss that while everyone was under the delighted impression that he had seen the Holy Ghost, Langston was actually distraught and mourning his loss of faith and belief in Jesus Christ.
The young boy in Araby who was so excited to go to the bazaar motivated by expectations that this occasion would be positively life-changing is faced with disappointment after the bazaar did not live up to his imagination. This boy realized in a sense that he let himself down and was responsible for his own disillusionment, this is reflected ultimately when he described himself in the end as a “creature driven and derided by vanity.”
Once upon a time as children, we thought in imaginative ways, it is only when our thought process matures that we are able to incorporate the real face of reality.
In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes he is let down of his expectation to be saved by Jesus and has the epiphany that Jesus did not exist. Langston had the literal expectation that he would be able to see Jesus, but after not seeing him, Langston did not believe in Jesus anymore and this was when young Langston Hughes lost his faith. In the face of exuberant churchgoers, during the come to Jesus ceremony at the church he attended, Langston felt ashamed that Jesus had not come to him as he was expecting. Among all those excited people cheering and encouraging Langston in the church toward his “holy salvation,” he felt pressure to just pretended and act in the way he thought was expected of him, by claiming he finally saw Jesus… When actually, nothing had happened for him; he never saw Jesus, and he was not “saved,” which lead him to mourn this later on and feel like he is a fraud and a liar.
The epiphany in Araby was the young boy’s disillusion when he realized the Bazaar didn’t live up to his expectation of being the brightly colored, adventurous place he imagined it would be. The young boy impatiently awaited the days to pass to finally go to see the Bazaar and anticipated that there, he would find amazing things to behold. He eagerly looked forward to buying a gift for the girl he “loved” and was obsessed with, so that she would be impressed. He finally arrives to the Bazaar and witnesses it was dark and void, seemingly desolate, unlike what he had imagined. There was a feeling of deep disappointment as it is described in the story, “Araby,” in this statement: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity, and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” The young boy realized his motivations had been for the wrong reasons.
Migena I agree with both of your epiphanies and I liked how you explained araby. Your right when you call it a delusion because that’s what it is, building up a delusion only to be disappointed by his high expectation. I also liked how you included that quote “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity, and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” This is something I overlooked and I also agree when you put how his motivation was for the wrong reason
For me the Epiphany in “salvation” was when he realized what he did by lying about seeing Jesus. In the story as he sees everyone seeing Jesus he starts getting pressured as people are waiting for him and his family member crying which was not helping him. when he was crying it was towards the end and I think that’s when the realization hit him. In “araby the epiphany was a bit challenging for me. This fantasy or this high expectation was created over something that wasn’t as big. The character ends up being mad when his fantasy or expectation wasn’t reached and its crazy to think because i’m sure that we were in a similar situation where we had high expectations over something and it didn’t end up going as we planned. Even though there was some type of connection between the two there was something deeper then that.
Mark, what is the truly devastating thing the boy in “Salvation” realizes? I’d also like a more specific discussion of “Araby” here. Some of the wording is vague and general. For example, you write that there was some kind of connection but that it was “something deeper than that.” Deeper than what? What is the connection between the boy and the girl in “Araby?”
In both ‘Araby’ by James Joyce and ‘Salvation’ By Langston Hughes, the main characters have a life changing epiphany. In Araby, the young man is nameless, which to me symbolizes his lack of identity and detachment from reality. He is living in this dull town and it seems that he doesn’t really have any interests nor hobbies to occupy his time. He mentions time and time again the absence of light in his life. That is, until he sees this girl for the first time. From that moment onward he puts her on this pedestal, almost as if he views her as a God or saintly figure. She is what brings light to his life. The story progresses and he becomes more and more infatuated with this girl. This image he has in his head of her warps his reality and quickly she becomes the only thing in his life that can make him feel something and brings this glimmer of light into his mundane life. His epiphany however, is towards the end of the story where he was going to this place called the bazaar to retrieve a gift for her. Here is where he realizes that he had become so blinded by his obsession with this girl and that he had built her up in his head only for it all to come tumbling down on top of him. The only thing in his life that brought him joy was a selfish fallacy, a false soul crushing reality. His life became void and dark once more. In Salvation, the 13 year old Langston is in church and all the younger children around his age are getting ‘saved.’ The church is erupting in song and dance all praising the lord, getting saved while Langston is waiting. He’s waiting on this promise that he will see Jesus and be enlightened and saved however that never happens for him. He is left confused wondering why he was not seeing what everyone else was ‘seeing’. Eventually, he decides enough is enough when the people of the church are begging and pleading for him to be saved. He lies and says he’s seen Jesus and that he’s saved but reaches the epiphany that God may not be real. And in this moment he loses his faith.
The epiphany that occurs in “Salvation” is that he realizes and believes that there is not any Jesus as he did not come to save him but because he did not want to hurt his aunt or anyone else he decides to deceive them and give into the pressure of everyone. On the other hand, in Araby he realizes that his love was too obsessive and overwhelming that it led him all the way to Araby in search of a gift for the girl he was in love with and because he was so consumed by this infatutution he spent less time focusing on what was really important and more time fantasizing about this “love” that he was not even sure of.
Payshanti, please be sure your comments meet the length requirements.
The epiphany that occurs in “Salvation” was a story about church and kids being “saved” I re-read this and the more I thought about it, it represented something else to me and a deeper meaning but yeah most of the kids in the church were “saved” and all went towards that while he was staying longer next to all the adults. Also I have so much to say but it is so difficult to put it in words… at the end of the day it looks and sound like he was upset that he was waiting for Jesus but he gave up? Also in the article “Araby” the author had something relatable going on just like in “salvation”, very different situation but he also had a epiphany and it was just some sort of disappointment at the end too.
Jaylene, an epiphany is not just the events of a story, as you indicate in your comment about “Salvation.” Something very profound happens to the boy. He has a realization, and this great realization is the epiphany. What does he realize? Your comments about “Araby” don’t give us any specific information. What is the “sort of disappointment” the boy experiences? What does he realize?
I do agree with the fact that he was disappointed, his aunt had put his hopes up and created a narrative in his head just for him to be disappointed and have to lie. He was awaiting Jesus to come down but in the end he was left with feeling extremely guilty, just at the fact that he had lied in God’s name. It also makes you think if it was entirely his fault because he was the only one being honest. Who knows if those other kids really did experience something. It was all the pressure of the people as well forcing him to give in because of their screaming and crying, they were overjoyed and for Langston he really wanted to please his aunt and he really wanted to feel something.
The epiphany in “Salvation” is that the main character, Langston, believes that Jesus will come to save him , because of stories he’s been told by his aunt, but things take an expected turn when he comes to the realization that Jesus or a grand divine may not be real. His aunt fills his head with the idea that Jesus will save him and that he will feel a light—caused by Jesus, which will erupt as a sign of rescue and salvation. While in the church, he notices that all the other kids are experiencing this “light”; however, Langston does not experience this epiphany. The pressure of the audience becomes so overbearing that he is forced to lie and join the rest of the kids—-in an act of performance, because he is not having this incredible experience with Jesus. The epiphany in the story “Araby” is that the main character, a small boy from Dublin, is experiencing the coming of age which influences him to want to impress a girl. He realizes, at the end, that he wasted all of his effort trying to impress Megan that he didn’t realize what he was getting himself into. He didn’t realize where he was or what he was going to encounter. Leaving the marketplace with no gift for her is also the cause of why he was angry.
An epiphany is generally used in terms to describe a striking realization through a scientific breakthrough or religious or philosophical discovery. For the First short story “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, it deals with a religious discovery through the eyes of a child. Langston (the child) is left alone to a self-actualization that Jesus is more than a physical entity. Langston faces an experience that causes him to question himself for his actions that were persuaded from the people around him. “Araby” By James Joyce is another short story in which the narrator faces an epiphany that changes his perspective. This boy falls into a deep admiration for a girl and is willing to do anything in order for their relationship to be more “romantic”. He later finds out that there is place much more distinctive where he imagines is to be an opportunity for the girl to admire him even more. As the story goes on he experiences something traumatic when he finally visits this bazaar place, and realizes that his dreams have been crushed. These two stories show that with the experiences of life our expectations and attitude toward certain beliefs are put through the test.