Salvation Summary

"Salvation" written by Langston Hughes is the story of the author being "saved" at his local church when he was 13 years old and his thoughts on this event. Hughes uses descriptive narration to illustrate the scene of a church where he and other children are gathered with their families to participate in a religious activity. He talks about how his aunt has built up this day for him for quite some time, and is very excited for Langston to be saved. She had described a specific way that the process would happen for him which included Langton seeing Jesus. He describes watching all of the children he was with walk up to the front of the church and accept Jesus, but because he never "sees" Jesus, he remains seated. Eventually he realizes that some of the children are not being truthful and claiming to have these revelations come to them. Due to guilt over having everyone wait on him, Hughes joins the children on the stage and is saved. That evening, the author describes crying himself to sleep because he feels so badly about not seeing Jesus and letting his Aunt down. He also decides he no longer believes in Jesus. The story Hughes shares is very powerful and the essay is appropriately named "Salvation". He describes the failure of his expectations in such a way that moves the reader to feel like they are part of the story. The name Salvation comes across to mean that the author possibly felt liberated from that life style upon