Salvation

In “Salvation”, Langston Hughes explains about his childhood experience on being forced to have faith in Jesus. As he was expecting to receive salvation, he couldn’t see any Jesus and that made him disappointed so that he claimed to have no faith in god. Literally, this story is about people’s fake faith in religion which Langston found through his observations and experiences that wasted his time.

Through the use of imagery as one of the literary devices, Hughes is able to show people’s belief on religion as fake thing through his own experiences in childhood. His opening statement of the story “I was saved……. But not really saved” demonstrates that he had an expectation of seeing god for the first time but it went wrong which made him to have no trust on god. Similarly he said “And I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting-… wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened.” He also believed that if we tell a lie then the god will punish but Westley was not punished even after telling lie. Similarly, he trusted his aunt and waited for a long time to see some miracle to happen. He showed the image of standing up to tell a lie that he had seen Jesus. This made everyone to burst out with loud shouting. These all examples help to clarify his thesis and turned the assumption of those spiritual and religious people wrong that there exists god who can listen us, help us or punish us. He finally proved that there is no existence of god because Jesus didn’t appear to save him.

Furthermore he also uses repetition as another literary device to emphasize his sarcasm about religion. People in the church tried to make him convince that there is a god. They asked him the same question in different form. Like, the Preacher said: “Won’t you come? Won’t you come to Jesus?” minister said “Why don’t you come? My dear child, why don’t you come to Jesus? Jesus is waiting for you….. “And his aunt also said him “Langston, why don’t you come? .....” They all gave him frustration to believe and feel the Jesus but he neither saw nor felt Jesus even though they tried to convince him by repeating same question. It was their fake belief that was pushing Langston to trust on it. He would have faith in god and religion if he had seen and felt the god. As he had never observed and experienced Jesus in his childhood, he got motivated to write this story to make people aware about what people belief and what the reality is.