Salvation

Salvation by Langston Hughes

"Wisdom comes by disillusionment." I think this judicious statement from George Santayana, a famous philosopher and man of letter, applies entirely to Langston Hughes' story Salvation. Young Langston is wiser by the end of the story because of the fact he was disillusioned in his faith after heeding everyone's advice and beliefs.

The little boy we meet in the story was sure he would see Jesus just like everyone said they did. He believed it really hard until he figured out he wouldn't come. He was disillusioned. People these days often hold on to fake ideas or illusions. Once they are faced with the truth, they either refuse it bluntly or become disillusioned and thus wiser like Mr. Santayana said. Socially this means Langston starts out his life as a teenager lying to everyone, which is of course resentful. It marks a change in his life; he is no longer as innocent as supposed to be.

One might wonder how he came to be brought back to reality so brutally. First things first, he was under a great deal of pressure from his family, the preacher and everyone else in the church who all had very high expectations of him. Such pressure often makes people crack. Everyone had told him how it had happened for them and that if he saw Jesus too; he would be saved, meaning he wouldn't be if he never showed up. All that raised his excitation so when the day came, he was really convinced that all of it would happen. He was at such a high level of anticipation that the fall from there to total disillusion was a long and painful one. He didn't have the guts to stand up to the crowd and it's ok, it's the human thing to do. Thus, he conformed and did as expected to, but while trying to please everyone, he was thoroughly deceived and in the meantime, he deceived everyone in the church who was expecting him to be "saved".

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