In Langston Hughes’s “Salvation,” the boy is an interesting character to study. At the beginning of the story, the boy is young, interested, and maybe even naive about being saved. Adults in his life, like his aunt and the people in the church, try to get him to accept Jesus Christ into his life. The adults around the boy are able to force him and get him to do what they want. The young boy is shown to be at odds with himself because he wants to be like the other kids but also wants to be honest and tell the truth. Even though he doesn’t have much faith, he feels like he has to live up to what the adults around him expect. So, he lies and says he is saved and has met Jesus, even though he hasn’t. At the end of the story, the boy’s disappointment and loss of hope are clear signs that he has changed. He used to believe in Jesus and salvation as a young boy, but now he feels lost, alone, and let down by his religious beliefs. Adults and the pressure to fit in with social norms have a big impact on what he thinks and how he feels. In the end, the boy in Langston Hughes’s “Salvation” is a complicated character that shows how society and culture can shape a person’s religious beliefs and how hard it is to fit in with the norms of society. At the beginning of the story, the young boy is interested, open, and naive. By the end of the story, he is disappointed in his beliefs, lost, and disillusioned.
Daily Archives: February 10, 2023
Various ways can be used to analyze the boy’s character, as stated in Langston Hughes’ “Salvation.” First of all, the boy can be considered susceptible and naive. At barely twelve years old, he is readily persuaded by his aunt and the elderly members of the church who preach about salvation. He patiently waits for this experience to occur since he also believes in seeing Jesus and experiencing him in his soul (Sharpe, 2020). However, he feels dissatisfied and disillusioned because this doesn’t happen. The inner conflict the youngster experiences between his wish to blend in and be accepted and his sense of honesty and truth is another part of his character to be analyzed. Even though the boy doesn’t have much faith at first, he is surrounded by individuals who have a strong faith in salvation, and he feels compelled to live up to their standards. This ultimately causes him to lie and claim that Jesus has appeared to him, even though he has had no such encounter. Hughes depicts the boy’s disappointment in the religious experience of being saved from sin. The boy is pressured into pretending to be saved to fit in with the other young sinners and avoid being the only one left on the mourners’ bench. Despite his efforts, he doesn’t feel any connection to Jesus and feels like he has deceived everyone in the church (Sharpe, 2020). Therefore, disillusionment, pressure, pretense, disappointment, and dishonesty can be best used to describe him. At the story’s beginning, he is a young boy whose aunt has taught that salvation is a real and tangible experience that one can see, hear, and feel. He believes in this and eagerly awaits the moment when Jesus will come to him and save him from sin. At the end of the story, […]
In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, the young boy seems to be very curious. I also feel as if he’s very pressured into the religion. He was just turning 13. He didn’t seem to have too much knowledge of what was going on. I think his expectations were based off what he had heard about Jesus coming to save him, and in his head, he pictured something completely different. At the end, he got nervous and felt like he had no choice but to lie, which in a way, makes sense because he was so young, he didn’t know any better. Also, because of everything he had heard about Jesus coming to save him, at the end he was disappointed and did not believe in Jesus anymore. In my personal opinion, I feel like adults should be more mindful of how they explain things like this to young children, because it really sticks with them throughout their childhood.
The story “The Most Handsomest Man That Drowned” is about a drowned man that washed up on the shore of a small village of fishers. The villagers see the man as prosaic and unimpressive. The villagers then set the man up for burial but as they do that they realize how admirable of his looks and appearance they then begin to idealize him. The reason I explained what the story is about in very few words is because it leads to why the professor chose this article as the first read. I believe you chose this article first because its a great example of “magical realism”. Which takes aspects of the combined reality and fantasy into one. Another reason. The story expressed the power of human imagination and the ways in which people can shape their own perceptions and interpretations of reality.
The boy in the story seemed to be curious but non believing. He watched the other people praise someone they couldn’t see and never saw before and wanted to know why and how, but he didn’t follow in their footsteps. He watched other people become saved and waited himself to see the light they were talking about. It was obvious at first that he didn’t believe them but probably didn’t want to speak against the adults. I would describe him as impatient and curious. I would say he is a very respectful kid since he held in his emotions and actually felt really bad about lying to everyone. He’s different in the end of the story because everyone else believes he was saved. After he watched the other boy give in after being tired of sitting there for so long, there was even more pressure on him since he was the only one still sitting down. He felt bad for letting it get so late and holding everyone up. It’s funny because he was thinking about what God might’ve thought about Westley because he had lied about being converted, but he didn’t see the light that would let him be saved by God. It’s like he doesn’t believe but at that moment he was speaking as if he somewhat believed in him.
In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, the character is an observant and curious African American boy who lives in the South. Two words I could use to describe him would be attentive and despondent. In the story, Hughes describes the church service, and through the inclusion of imagery, he displays his attentiveness in the beginning. For example, Hughes starts the story fast paced, jumping from detail to detail as a way of mimicking the high church energy that the character was surrounded by. This proves Langston to be attentive because as a young boy who is not familiar with the concept of spirituality and religion, he was able to understand his environment and what was expected out of him from it from the members of the church. Hughes highlights the pressure applied to “see” Jesus in order to be accepted as the lamb. This is largely shown in the song that the pastor sang to the children about the “ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold” (Hughes paragraph 3). This is what leads the boy in the story to change into a despondent person because he did not get the spiritual awakening that he expected and that was when he became the “one little lamb left out in the cold”. From the beginning, readers are able to see the excitement and hope turn into pessimism and self-judgment once the boy lied about reaching salvation by even concluding that he “didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore” (Hughes paragraph 20). This fuels self-judgement because now he sees himself as unworthy of being saved from sin.
I could describe Hughes as a sincere person. I consider him a sincere person because he was very genuine at the end despite his actions. In the story, “Salvation”, Langston Hughes introduces us to Auntie Reed, Westly and himself. In ‘Salvation’ we could analyze Hughes as a boy that is losing faith and some that is peer influences. Hughes began to lose his faith in Jesus because Auntie Reed led him to believing that he will see some physical miracle of Jesu when he is saved. Hughes started to see that every other kid was begin saved but him and Westly weren’t. However, Westly decided to stand up as if he was really saved. This made Hughes feel bad about himself since he was the only one sitting. As the adult continued to pray for Hughes, he stands up as if he was “finally saved” by pretending to see Jesus. He was not saved by the love of Jesus but by falling into peer pressure. According to the text, it states ” but I was really crying because … to tell her that I had lied…” this shows us that the peer pressure led him to feeling guilt and frustrated for lying. However he fixed it by telling the truth at the end.
I would describe Langston as a young man who was probably forced to go to church by his aunts and uncles who had encouraged him to submit to Jesus for his own good. I feel this young man in Langston is naive and doesn’t have good judgement since he expected Jesus to come out the shadows or appear in thin air to save him. I think Langston Hughes and his naviety is just a curious young boy who expected Jesus to swoop in and save him like his aunts and uncles said he would. I know Langston is a different person from everyone else who attended the church that day since he was the last one to be saved by Jesus, he just sat there and watched everyone else run off into salvation. Once all the attention in the church was on him he caved into what other people wanted and allowed himself to be saved by Jesus. I think Langston changed when he had not seen Jesus come save him it made him question if Jesus was even real, Langston felt bad because he lied to get out of that tough situation. I think in the end Langston going to church as a “young sinner” looking to be saved by Jesus that day just strained and made him question his ideas and relationship with Jesus since he had not come to save him like everyone said he would.
I would analyze and describe this character as curious and trying to sustain his religion and respect the beliefs that come along with it. He’s excited and almost skeptical of what is about to take place or what it really means to be saved and to see Jesus as everyone around him is telling him. It started to become a thing where it was intense pressure as all the other kids were in fact being “saved” while the boy was the only one left. Langston begins to feel doubt, lowering his confidence of seeing Jesus and his mind shifts. He doubts the truth of it all. Under the pressure of the women and the people of the church he finally stands. He started off happy and looking forward to something and realized maybe it all isn’t true as he had to lie about being saved. His beliefs were then struck and he no longer believed there was a Jesus to see or to help him.
