I believe this story was assigned to us because of the real world connections most of us can make. this story elaborates on little thing such as feelings not being met some days, thinking about things people said to you as an Illusion to get you to think a certain way or feel a certain way about life. being open minded about something can lead to other things. this story also shares details about allowing some one to communicate with you brings new thinking and perspective on life. the book also inform me that someone can change a person with in a due time. In the book when the character was at his lowest point in life there were kind people who cared for his life that help him and showed or spoken word to him that made him realize that doing that only leads to one end but the other leads to a lot. I felt like this was shared to the class to tell us that communication with our peers might help someone in the future that need , not only for life saving events but for work or other personal use.
Daily Archives: February 6, 2023
This work “Salvation” is very interesting to me. It gives you a glimpse of a young Langston being pressured into accepting Jesus Christ into his life. From a 12 year old perspective, he’s describing all the behaviors of the adults in at the revival. The moaning, wailing, and also the coercion. I can imagine the intense pressure he felt to go up to the alter. The last hold out before him, Westley gave in to the pressure. He felt like he had no choice at that point. I do find a bit of comedy in the writing, as I remember being in similar situations growing up. In the end he gave in just to end the whole ordeal. I believe from the adults perspective, they had good intentions. They were extremely concerned with the salvation of these children. Interestingly enough, even though they had good intent, the way they went about it got the opposite reaction. Young Langston ended crying and lying about accepting salvation. I would like to believe that as a society we have moved past this. I see so many examples of ideas being forced on people through media. The only difference is we’re not at a revival.
In my opinion, the boy in the story “Salvation” is very honest about himself, since he knew it wasn’t his time or turn to be saved by Jesus like everyone around him. The boy changed throughout the story, because he started feeling guilty for giving into peer pressure and not telling everyone the truth. According to the text, “But I was really crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me.” (Langston Hughes). Furthermore, the boy did not want to be seemed as a disappointment to his aunt and everyone at church, since his aunt wanted him to have a bigger connection with Jesus and be “saved.” Everyone has their time and the right moment, but the boy knew it wasn’t his time so he lied to be on the same page as everyone else on Salvation. At the same time everyone else was being “saved”, there was irony involving with the boy’s saving.
