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Lanston's Irony In Salvation

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Lanston's Irony In Salvation
The story’s title, Salvation, foreshadows its bitter irony. In attempting to find salvation, Langston winds up lost. Lost in his religious disillusionment. Lost in his failure to embrace familial values. Lost in his realization that his elders are fundamentally mistaken in their beliefs. And finally, he is lost because he’s placed such a looming, terrible lie between himself and the people he has loved and trusted his entire life. This irony - the disparity between what is expected and what actually occurs - is a part of adult life. Disappointment is a part of adult life. Langston loses his innocence the night of the church revival, but in loss, he gains this difficult insight into the complexity of the adulthood that is to come.

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