To a developing mind, communication and understanding are first grasped literally. In the case of children, figurative speech is more difficult to comprehend due to its abstract nature. This is explicated in the short story “Salvation” by Langston Hughes. Langston goes through a dilemma during salvation, defined in the sense of Theology as “the deliverance from sin and its consequences,” (“salvation, n”) when his aunt apprises him of Jesus coming down in the form of bright light for his liberation. His literal interpretation of his aunt’s metaphoric language led to a host of emotions and confusion on his path to redemption. The essay becomes one of consternation and cynicism toward his religion. Living with his aunt and uncle at the time, Langston was now 13 and ready to be redeemed. Regrettably, the outcome was not as intended. His aunt, being a dutiful, archetypal devout, “spoke of it for days.” (547) She once elucidated, “when you were saved you saw a bright light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life!” (547) Polysyndeton is used to illustrate his aunt’s enthusiasm toward the event. As well, the quick, overbearing nature of this passage, paired with using exclamation marks powerfully conveys the expectation and perturbation felt by Hughes to experience deliverance in this fashion. A definite shift in attitude is …show more content…
It is, thus, a pressuring and life-changing moment. Langston Hughes, the author and narrator of the composition, “Salvation,” is met with a barrage of thought and emotion come deliverance. Langton’s naivete mistook his aunt’s metaphoric description of salvation, and this led to an absence of spiritual epiphany when the time came. Ultimately, this evoked great dismay and skepticism toward his indoctrinated ideology. Langton's failure to understand the nuances of language is thus the cause of him losing faith in the church and
Few religions outline the exact steps towards salvation. They follow this practice with the belief that no mortal can truly know whether they will see heaven’s pearly gates, even if he or she spends years knocking on doors with tracts and Bibles in hand. In Langston Hughes’ “Salvation,” however, a church in the midst of a revival pleads and shouts that a young Hughes simply needs to see Jesus to be saved. But when Hughes can’t see Jesus, he loses faith in both salvation and himself. To help his readers understand his younger self’s reasoning for his loss of faith, Hughes manipulates his syntax to immerse the audience in his naive 13-year-old mind.
Marshall Lewis’ repentant confession letter was a spellbinding inclusion. He sold the letter to the local newspapers as a way to raise money to transport his soon dead body back to his family in Oakfield. His reverence for his parents and for his God touched me and left me feeling he was genuinely
Langston Hughes short story “Salvation” epitomizes what is an internal struggle for many people, especially children, who want so badly to believe what they have been taught all their lives by their relatives, elders in the church and the preacher; that to have a relationship with God, you must be saved and only then will you be able to see him. Hughes’ Aunt Reed paints such a vivid picture of that idea beginning in the story’s second chapter: “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.”
In “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, he recalls a time from his childhood when he was at church. All the children of the church were being “saved” until he was eventually the last one who wasn’t. Feeling tired and pressured, Langston stood, declaring he had been saved. He felt horrible for lying, but the pressure placed upon him by the entire church outweighed the feeling of guilt. Similarly, people of all types experience a feeling similar to Langston’s; something called peer pressure.
Writing about controversial subjects can often be difficult; however Hughes executed his story, Salvation, in an intriguing manner that is suitable to all audiences and religions. In this story, the writer retells an experience from his childhood describing his journey to Jesus Christ. Discussing the complications, the main character, Hughes, faced while trying to come to Jesus is what makes the story interesting to read. On many occasions, you will read a story or watch a movie that shows the main character coming to Jesus and having an immediate and obvious realization of their Savior. For this reason, I found this story to be unique and relatable in the way that it shows a journey that countless Christians face, but you are not often granted the opportunity to read about this type of experience.
In “Salvation,” Langston Hughes presents his momentous coming-of-age story as a dark and saddening ending to his childhood that provides the reader with understanding of the loss of innocence; and faith he faced and how it impacted who he came to be. Hughes makes a strong implication that children become less and less innocent over time. Hughes himself proves that through the tone of his entire essay. It begins with a light toned; yet still ironic introduction, but ends with a dark, depressing final line. Hughes supplies his reader with multiple literary devices such as imagery, flashbacks, and irony to present this comparison of his younger self and his older self.
This piece of figurative language has a big impact on the text because it is pretty much saying that the moments that happened in the camp made him lose that connection with his god, soul and made him feel like his dreams were never going to happen cause he was just sitting in that camp doing labor for several months. This affects the reader cause this shows more of how the camp really
Langston Hughes used rhetoric words in his story “Salvation,” to provide foreshadows, and emotional appeals to his struggles in becoming religiously saved. Hughes began his story by stating “I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen (179).” The irony in this opening is that Hughes initially believed in the presence of Jesus, but unexpected pressures pushed him to betray and deceive his faith. The setting of Hughes struggles took place in a religious ceremony in his Auntie Reed’s church. In this service, many young children like Hughes were gathered to be spiritually cleansed by the light of Jesus.
Langston Hughes 's shifting attitude toward salvation in his essay was disappointing and at the same time upsetting. He 's disappointed and upset because he was forced to believe in the situation that something will happen to him inside before he accept Jesus but instead it did not happen. Most of the time we are pressured to accept an idea of what others belief, not because we agree to it but instead we intentionally do it for them to stop asking. Some felt the guilt after, and do something about it but most of the time we just let it go and move on.
Hughes and Cullen Poetry Analysis Langston Hughes was a black writer during the harlem renaissance who wrote poetry and other papers. Hughes wrote a poem called A Dream Deferred. That poem is about what happens when a dream is deferred. Another writer during the harlem renaissance is Countee Cullen.
In the essay “Salvation” by Langston Hughes, Hughes argues that one should make decisions themselves instead of being forced by other people in your life. At the start of the essay, Hughes explains to the reader that his aunt was excited about anl at church where kids would get saved. Seeing Jesus,Hughes aunt told him, means you are saved and have accepted Jesus into your life. Right there is where the pressure starts for
In the poem “I, Too”, the author Langston Hughes illustrates the key aspect of racial discrimination faces against the African Americans to further appeals the people to challenge white supremacy. He conveys the idea that black Americans are as important in the society. Frist, Hughes utilizes the shift of tones to indicate the thrive of African American power. In the first stanza, the speaker shows the sense of nation pride through the use of patriotic tone. The first line of the poem, “I, too, sing America” states the speaker’s state of mind.
On a bright Sunday morning, accompanied by her mother and grandmother, a young girl lounges in the pew of a church when a missal catches her eye, and she begins to flip through the pages revealing the compilation of the religious texts. As this young girl grows older and presumably pursues a higher education, she will begin studying texts of the same complexity of those contained in the missal, which will challenge traditional beliefs and contrast religious literature with literature that happens to contain religious themes. When analyzing these pieces of work, the girl will propose many questions that readers prior may have considered at an earlier time. In American literature, specifically through the examples of "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman and Lorraine Hansberry 's A Raisin the Sun, religion, once thought of as a unification of all people, paradoxically acts as a source of the development of an identity, rebellion from a community, and a factor of discrimination.
We can define the word salvation as deliverance from sin and its consequences, believed by Christians to be brought about by faith in Christ. One can be saved by accepting Jesus Christ into your life, but this wasn’t the case for Langston Hughes when he wrote “Salvation”. Having portrayed himself as a young teenage boy when this piece was written and using the first person perspective, the pressure he felt wanting to actually see and feel Jesus is the main reason why he ruined it for himself, and he was not “saved”. The first two lines even say “I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved.”
Everyone has dreams, but the thing is most people never accomplish them. Some people put off their dreams to the side because something more important than their dreams comes forth. They believe that is better to put their dreams to the side or give up on them and allow their dreams to fade in their minds. In “What happens to a dream deferred?” by Langston Hughes, the poet uses the title, tone, diction, and selection of detail, to express how people are affected by deferred dreams.