Langston Hughes Salvation Essay
“Salvation”
Langston Hughes Finds God in His Essay “Salvation”
In Langston Hughes’ essay “Salvation,” the author recounts how his failure to “see” Jesus and be outwardly saved results in a deeper, more stirring revelation: that only he---and not Jesus---can save his soul. Although Hughes devotes much of his essay to parodying the salvation experiences and apparent hypocrisy of other church members, and he tells us that the church building is stuffy, uncomfortable, hot and boring, he abruptly changes his tone at the end. When he describes how he cried in bed from guilt at having lied about his salvation, the reader realizes that Hughes has indeed undergone a powerful spiritual awakening: he has been saved from his own hypocrisy.
Hughes starts off his essay using apparent irony by saying he “was saved from sin when …show more content…
He has fooled everyone into believing that he had found Jesus Christ. The only reason why he went up to the podium in the first place was to seek a way out sitting on the pews all day at church being told by the church elders, you’ll be damned if you don’t repent and be baptized! etc. Later on that night, Langston felt not only pressured into doing this but a sense of self actualization that he wanted to truly find Jesus, but in the end he ended up not only hurting himself, but the rest of his family for lying the whole time about his true feelings and the reason why he was in bed crying that whole night. Hughes writes, “I couldn’t bear the fact that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, and I hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come help me,” Hughes (352). This passage provides a vivid explanation of his outlook on those around him and how he betrayed himself into lying for the sake of
Langston Hughes Finds God in His Essay “Salvation”
In Langston Hughes’ essay “Salvation,” the author recounts how his failure to “see” Jesus and be outwardly saved results in a deeper, more stirring revelation: that only he---and not Jesus---can save his soul. Although Hughes devotes much of his essay to parodying the salvation experiences and apparent hypocrisy of other church members, and he tells us that the church building is stuffy, uncomfortable, hot and boring, he abruptly changes his tone at the end. When he describes how he cried in bed from guilt at having lied about his salvation, the reader realizes that Hughes has indeed undergone a powerful spiritual awakening: he has been saved from his own hypocrisy.
Hughes starts off his essay using apparent irony by saying he “was saved from sin when …show more content…
He has fooled everyone into believing that he had found Jesus Christ. The only reason why he went up to the podium in the first place was to seek a way out sitting on the pews all day at church being told by the church elders, you’ll be damned if you don’t repent and be baptized! etc. Later on that night, Langston felt not only pressured into doing this but a sense of self actualization that he wanted to truly find Jesus, but in the end he ended up not only hurting himself, but the rest of his family for lying the whole time about his true feelings and the reason why he was in bed crying that whole night. Hughes writes, “I couldn’t bear the fact that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, and I hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come help me,” Hughes (352). This passage provides a vivid explanation of his outlook on those around him and how he betrayed himself into lying for the sake of