Kiara Gonzalez Discussion 3

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.