“Salvation” by Langston Hughes was a very interesting read because it brings a lot of emotions and perspective into play. Throughout the story, it talks about how Hughes developed a fear over something he believed would be very positive for him. At the end of the story, he states “I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me”. His attitude towards being “saved” completely changed everything for him at the end of the story. At the same time, Hughes was only thirteen years old at the time, and he couldn’t have possibly known what it fully meant to be “saved”. This story also shows, in my opinion, peer pressure. One of the kids decided to just lie and go up and be “saved” and when Hughes decided to do the same, which ended with him feeling guilty and sad about it. And this brings me back to the sentence Hughes wrote at the end of the story because it shows how much his attitude and feelings towards Jesus changed in the end.
Daily Archives: September 10, 2022
In ” Salvation” by Langston Hughes, the young narrator changes from being hopeful, naive and excited at the beginning of the story to feeling turmoil and grief at the end of it. At the beginning of the story Hughes is shown to have trust in what the adults around him say and believe, this trust fed into his excitement at attending the church meeting. This trust fueled his belief in God, and it was put to the test during his church’s prayer night. During that night, Hughes was forced to lie about his belief in God by the pressures of the people in his church, he followed another who also lied about seeing Jesus. This traumatic event caused him grief and turmoil since he lied to the congregation and, more specifically, his aunt. This turmoil grew further when his aunt recognized his crying as being happy for having found God and not for having lied about it. This shows a further disconnect between him and his aunt, and also with himself from the beginning of the story.
In the short story, ” Salvation” by Langston Hughes explains about the narrator losing his faith in religion and stating that he’s a sinner. It’s a controversial piece that leaves readers with an ongoing debate. In the beginning of the story, he places his setting at a revival at his aunt church. There was a special meeting for the children for them to meet Jesus. He really believed he was going to meet Jesus because all the older adults had told them so. When he sees the kids going, he starts to worry, but when he sees one if his friends using God name in vain and lying about see Jesus and God not doing anything about it, he starts to question. He values honesty. I say that because towards the end of the story he cries in bed because he lied, and the church lied to him. his trust is broken.
I think the teacher might have assigned ”The Most Handsome Drowned Man” by Gabriel García Márquez as the first story of the course because we can realize that we don’t choose how we want to be in the world. Therefore, the fact that men consider making houses with much wider doors, understanding that this helps us to have empathy for human beings, Esteban was a tall, handsome and strong man. However, as time passes in Latin cultures, phallocracy predominates and in the situation of having found a drowned man, the men of the town showed solidarity with him. We live in a society where they make you feel present for being famous, and /or have money etc. However, this story helps us understand the power of our imagination because as I read it, I wonder about the uncertainties that the people who found the drowned man must have had and still gave him a dignified burial without knowing his life and education.
